


refulgence.

by thepapernautilus



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Content Warnings in the Chapter Summaries, FFxivWrite2020, I'm A Trash Can Not A Trash Can't, Multi, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers, actually lewd handholding, emet/exarch in ch. 10 & 20, grandpa on grandpa violence, have i punished catboy enough for his sins? maybe, i have no one to blame but myself, i'm in horny jail forever byeeeee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:01:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 45,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26243092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepapernautilus/pseuds/thepapernautilus
Summary: refulgence| \ri-ˈfu̇l-jən(t)s\ | a radiant or resplendent quality or stateYou feel as if you’ve missed something important. A lunar eclipse gone unseen, a shooting star concealed by cloud cover. Beauty and magnificence dissipate into nothingness.You wonder at what he said to you, a mystery buried in the dredges of time.FFXIVWrite2020 compilation. Table of Contents in ch. 31.Please heed content warnings in the chapter summaries.
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Reader, G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light, Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch
Comments: 539
Kudos: 335
Collections: #FFxivWrite2020 Final Fantasy 30 Day Writing Challenge





	1. crux.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated E for: Explicit sexual content, consensual erotic asphyxiation, subtle dom/sub elements.**  
>  The Warrior of Light has little patience for G'raha's reservations.  
> WoL/Exarch.

**crux** | _noun_

\ _ˈkrəks, kru̇ks_ \

a puzzling or difficult problem; an unsolved question

an essential point requiring resolution

a main or central feature

* * *

“The crux of the matter is—“

“—is?” The cool tips of her fingers trail down G’raha’s bare chest, gliding over the whorls of solid crystal like frigid ice skates, tracing the old brands of lovemaking like familiar flowers in her fields. Her head tilts up to his with a contented hum, eyes glimmering with mirth.

“—is… that we cannot continue this… _affair._ ”

She raises her brows, a genuine show of surprise save for the impetuous smirk on her sanguine lips. “An _affair?_ But that implies we’re doing something sordid, something _distasteful_.” Her tricky fingers skirt down the solid plane of his oblique, purring her contentment as his stomach ripples in a shudder as she slides down the curve leading to his spent loins. “Raha—oh, I’m sorry—my _lord_ , are you not enjoying yourself?”

“You yourself know the answer to _that_ question,” he grits, baring his teeth in a snarl as her hand drifts down the taut flesh of his thigh, markedly avoiding that which was already swelling due to the mere _suggestion_ of her attentions.

“You certainly weren’t having regrets five minutes ago,” she scolds, dragging her nails down his thigh, digging into the flesh hard enough to draw blood as if she was testing his strength. Evidently she’s satisfied with what she finds, because she deigns to encircle his girth in her small warm hand, giving a testing pump as his head tips back, mouth open in a breathless gasp. “nor when you stole into my room in the middle of the night.”

“I simply don’t… wicked _white_ , Warrior, you make it extraordinarily difficult to focus.” She comes astride his lap at his words, bracketing his slender hips with her own toned thighs and locking her arms around his neck. He places his hands on those strong arms, steadying himself in the weight of her gravity.

“Tell me,” she whispers in his ear then, dragging the scarlet velvet through her teeth before ducking her head to tread the well-worn path from his jaw down to this collarbone. Her teeth always feel deadly sharp against his skin, her tongue branding him forever hers, altering the very aether around them with her power.

“You, and your companions, will leave this Shard one day,” he pants helplessly. His hands slide down to his own familiar haunts; the tempting swells of her breasts, the ladder of her ribs, all the way down to the swell of her hips and haunches. “and I will remain, unless the gods themselves deem me worthy of a miracle.”

She sighs, petulant. “What have we said about talking of the future in bed?”

“Ah, but _you_ were the one who bid me tell you, my love.”

“So I was.” She smirks. “And, what? You think simply because we are separated by time and space there would be aught to keep me from you?”

“You deserve—you deserve someone who could adventure with you, you could be by your side, in every way possible.” He tangles his hand in her tresses, languishing in the silken weight of them in his palms.

Her eyes narrow at his words, glittering harder than gemstones, promising more cruelty than the sharpest knife.

“The crux of the matter _is,_ ” she snarls, pushing him _hard_ down onto the sheets, coming astride him, her still-wet apex brushing his tip, “I _deserve_ whoever I deem _worthy._ And you’re the only one warming my bed, G’raha Tia.”

He tries to rise up on his arms, to watch her impale herself on him, to see each ilm of him slide into her, but she grips his throat with punishing force, her thumb over his rioting pulse. With each push of her hips the grip grows harder, until the dark closes in around his eyes, and all he can hear is her gentle cruel laughter and the scalding warmth of her around him and that iron-clad hand never leaving his throat.

“What I deserve… is _you._ ”


	2. sway.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rated G for: dancing and op wants to flirt with everyone.  
> The Alliance leaders throw a ball in honor of the Scion's return, and your hand is highly sought after.  
> WoL/Graha, implied WoL/Aymeric, inferred Estimeric, and everyone is a touch WoL-sexual.

**sway |** _noun_

\ _ˈswā_ \

an inclination or deflection caused by or as if by swaying

an oscillating, fluctuating, or sweeping motion

a controlling influence or sovereign power

* * *

Tataru clucks like an irritable hen as she flounces the ruffles of your dress, the shimmering cloth catching the aetherlight of the intricate chandeliers overhead. You squeak when the pinprick of her needle pierces the tender flesh of your hip.

“Sorry, sorry!” She exclaims, sticking the needle again in the correct spot, quickly stitching up an errant hem. “Fitting you and the Scions has been quite a great deal more work than I anticipated… oh, but you look _lovely,_ my dear!” She drops from her stepstool, brushing off her own modest yet elegant yukata, a loving allusion to her time in Doma. “Have a look!”

You set the half-drained wineglass in your shaking hands down on an end table, stepping forward to examine yourself in the large gilded mirror. Reflected before you is a woman you hardly recognize; where was the characteristic smatter of blood across your cheek, the swathes of caked dirt on your leggings and boots, the stench of travel clinging to your clothes? The woman before you has been scrubbed pink and glimmering, her hair elegantly styled by Jandelaine de Dzemael himself, lashes long and lustrous across her flushed cheek. The gown is of Ishgardian construction, with a tight-fitting bodice and sumptuous fabrics, a product of the ongoing Restoration efforts. Your heels click the ground smartly as you spin to see every angle.

“You’ve outdone yourself,” you beam to Tataru’s awaiting face. “I scarcely recognize whoever this woman is in this mirror.”

She squeals with delight, clapping her hands together. “Oh, I’m so glad you think so! Although you haven’t even seen G’raha yet.” She giggles at your expression; doubtless the curiosity was laid bare across your face. “I still have some work to do with him; but go, the first dance is upon us, and I know _every_ Alliance leader wants the honor of your hand.” Pressing a kiss to your hand, she shoos you out of the powder room through a discrete door. You follow the noise of the crowd into the ballroom, flushing with embarrassment when the audience falls silent.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and those that lieth betwixt,” Alphinaud announces once he catches sight of you, a smile in his voice and a glass raised, “though she requires no introduction, please welcome Eorzea’s Warrior of Light.”

You have little time to process Ala Mhigo’s overwhelming reception before the Alliance leaders greet you in turn. Merlwyb catches your free hand in her strong ones, her calluses tingling your palm as she bends low to press a smoldering kiss into your hand, quicksilver eyes burning into yours. “My lady,” she purrs into your hand, “you bring the sea itself to shame.”

“And the Gridanian forests!” Kan-E-Seena’s mellifluous voice comes from your right. “My dear, you look _wonderful._ ” She curtsies sweetly in her snow white gown, the effect of a swan added by the unusual cut of the hem, echoing elegant wings.

“Yes,” perched atop the safety of Raubahn’s shoulder, Nanamo Ul Namo looks surpassingly lovely in a palest pink gown, the mint of her eyes glinting with mirth, “Tataru has truly polished your beauty to a shine.”

“One would hardly suspect a warrior underneath all those frills,” Raubahn gruffs with a grin. His traditional black cape has been replaced with a sweeping violet one, echoing the colors of Ala Mhigo. His greying locks sprawl like a mane across his shoulders and he looks every ilm the king the Ala Mhigans consider him to be.

You hear someone call your name; you barely turn before you’re caught up in surprisingly strong arms with the grip of a monk. “It has been too long!” Lyse yelps excitedly in your ear, holding you at arms length to look you over. “Did Tataru make that? Rhalgr, you look _gorgeous!_ ”

“So I’ve been told,” you laugh. “You look well! The throne befits you.”

“Oh, this?” She handwaves her gown of scarlet and gilded finery. “’Twas a gift from the Ananta. It resembles Lakshmi a little _too_ much for my taste, but far be it from me to turn down a gift.”

You open your mouth to retort, and are silenced by a honeyed call behind you.

“My dear friend, it has been _far_ too long.”

You spin to meet the eyes of Ser Aymeric de Borel, his hand extended in welcome. The cloth of his suit echoes the cerulean of his eyes, no doubt another feat of artistry rendered physical by the weavers of the Restoration. His hand is warm as a fire in winter as you slide yours into his, warmer still the breath ghosting across your knuckles as he presses a decidedly unchaste kiss into your hand.

“It has,” you stammer, breathless. You had forgotten Aymeric’s court-honed gallantry, and your heart stutters in your breast as he bends his arm to draw you close.

“May I have honor of your first dance?” He smiles. From behind, you hear Lyse huff in exasperation “— _I’m_ the one throwing the damn party!” And the sighs of resignation from Merlwyb and Raubahn both.

“You may,” you grin, “although I fear you are a far more accomplished dancer than I.”

“There is little difference between the dance of a battlefield and the dance upon a ballroom floor,” Aymeric says matter-of-factly, bringing you close as the orchestra strikes the first note of the minuet, “for you are beset on all sides by enemies great and small, and rely upon your own wits and constitution to pave the way to glory.”

“Well, aren’t you the poet,” you snip as he takes the lead, his hand at your waist feeling just shy of profane. “Is this what you’ve learned in the House of Lords?”

“Regrettably,” he grins, boyish and lighthearted. He is as skilled at dancing as he is at battle, leading you in a flawless dance. You struggle to ignore the eyes on you, catching sight of the Scions talking animatedly with the remaining Alliance leaders. _No Raha._

“Have you seen head or tail of a certain surly dragoon?” Aymeric asks, leading you through a spin without a single misstep. You struggle to catch your breath when you come back into his arms.

“I hear he keeps company with a certain black wolf nowadays.”

“Ah, yes. Alphinaud spoke of such. Happy though I may be for his freedom from his duties, I cannot help but miss his presence.” The sorrow across his fine features pangs your heart; it is a subdued misery you know all too well, during the days to follow after the Seat of Sacrifice. “But he would have my head if he knew I spoke of him so fondly. What of you? The rumor in The Forgotten Knight is that the Warrior of Light has taken a lover.”

“A lover?” You say incredulously. “How preposterous. Everyone knows we’ve been courting _intently_ ever since that damned dinner, all in a plot to make me the new Archbishop. Or so it goes.”

He chuckles. “No, it’s true. I heard from a reliable source that since the Scions’ return you’ve been nigh _inseparable_ from a certain ginger Miqo’te.”

“And who is this source?”

He grin is rakish and villainous. “Alisaie.”

You let out a distinctly un-ladylike groan of exasperation.

“Did she, now?” You mutter darkly, avoiding his eyes.

“Indeed. I believe the word she used was _disgusting_ ,” he laughs. “But do not heed her words, for being in love suits you. Tataru’s dress has little to do with your beauty this night.”

You blush at his flattery. “I had wanted you to meet him, actually. You two have more in common than not.”

“We are of the same mind, then.” His eyes soften, reaching up to brush an errant lock of hair from your upturned face with a gentle touch. “I only wish Ser Haurchefant were here to meet him as well.”

The grief isn’t the maelstrom it once was, but you still feel its presence in your heart like a wound never fully healed, nagging and throbbing. Ser Aymeric’s expression changes, and he sweeps you into a series of flowing dance steps.

“In our dear friend’s stead, Count Fortemps has assured me he’d like a strong word or three with your young consort.”

You let your laughter ring free, following Aymeric’s guidance through a spin, this time leading into a tricky execution of a modest dip, his strong arm about your waist. You feel a surge of affection for the once somber knight as he laughs at your surprise, remembering when you first met him in a frigid room on the worst morning of your life.

“Ser Aymeric de Borel, I presume?”

You come apart with a start, and you cannot help the squeak of joy that looses itself from your lips. “ _Raha!_ ”

Tataru had done well indeed; the color of his suit echoes your own gown albeit a shade darker, but the choice was unmistakable. No one would doubt you were a matched pair. The cut of the fabric flatters his lean hips and broad shoulders, the gold accents catching the firelight and your eye. His scarlet hair is loose about his shoulders, rebellious and handsome, save for his typical hairclips, which are swapped for a gilded pin echoing the gold detailing of his old Exarch robes. He would be every inch a king save for the impish grin on his full lips.

“I am… a _complete_ arse,” you blink, collecting yourself. “Ser Aymeric, I would like you to meet my dear friend, the Archon G’raha Tia of Allag.”

Aymeric bows low with a sweep of his starlit cloak. “The honor is mine, Archon. I have heard well the story of your deeds, and would be eager to hear them from your own lips.”

G’raha laughs, your hand automatically finding its place on his arm as you step to his side. “If anything, it is a lengthy tale indeed—though not nearly as fascinating or well told as the Dragonsong War. The Warrior has told me her part, but I would hear yours, if I could.”

“I owe our dear friend a dinner—and your presence would be more than welcome at any table of mine.”

He nods, unexpectedly somber at the invitation. “I would be honored. However,” he gives you a smirk that renders you speechless, “I did not come here for gallant reasons—I came to steal your fetching dance partner, if you would be so kind.”

“I do not think she would do aught she doesn’t wish,” Aymeric smiles with a chuckle, “but by all means.” He bows to you once more, before disappearing to speak with a grinning Count Fortemps, you waves to you with a nod of his head.

“You’re the talk of the ball, my love,” Raha grins, pulling you into dancing once more as the next sonata begins. You stand much closer to one another, with the easiness of those who are well acquainted with one another’s bodies, your hand tangling in his loose fiery locks at his nape and his hand finding a home at your waist. “Y’shtola tells me there was a bet between the Alliance on who would have your hand for the first dance, something around half a million gil passing hands.”

“Oh dear. Did Aymeric upset things?”

“Thoroughly. He wasn’t even part of the pool.” He grins. “However, the Admiral vowed she would have the second dance, and every one after.”

“Raha!” You bark with laughter. “She’ll have your head for such a dishonor, no doubt.”

“Ah, well.” He grin is sweet and charming. “I hear there is no honor among pirates, but even so, it will have been worth it.”

The sway of his body against yours is as steady and inimitable as the tides themselves; it feels only fitting that you would press your lips to his, despite the hundreds of eyes on each of you. He tastes like wine and caviar, a distinct change from the black tea and Archon loaf usually on his tongue.

“Regardless,” you smile as you pull away, his scarlet eyes rendered molten fire, “you were my first choice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my GOSH this was so fun to write! i don't know if any prompts will be quite this long, but all the cards fell into place for this one. thank you for reading! <3


	3. muster.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rated G. No content warnings apply.  
> The salmon fillet incident, and Lyna runs out of patience.  
> Platonic Lyna & Exarch, discussed WoL/Exarch.

**muster** | _verb_

\ _ˈmə-stər_ \

to bring forth together; cause a gathering

to amount to

to call forth

* * *

Perhaps Captain Lyna’s bones were more rattled than she was wont to admit after the guard’s evening muster; three other guards had filed requests for immediate discharge, the papers clenched in her fist as she made her way to the Dossal Gate. She envied their sense of freedom, that uncanny ability to simply shirk one’s duty upon finding it inconvenient. The weight of the Crystarium had weighed heavily upon her since she was a kit, and despite the return of night, the Sin Eaters were still basking in every bright afternoon.

“Ah, Captain Lyna.” The Crystal Exarch smiles to her as she steps into his quarters. They were the same chambers he’d abided in since her childhood, albeit more messy and unkempt; books, papers, and letters were stacked into clumsy piles at every corner. His desk was the most luxurious thing he owned, a lovely piece handcrafted from Lakeland oaks by the Crystarium carpenters upon finding out the Exarch had worked off a crate and a pile of books for nearly thirty years. He’d pushed aside the typical carpet of letters and quills to make way for two modest plates of dinner: salmon fillet on beds of spinach mint sauté and fragrant Kholusian rice. Taking meals with him was the simplest way of ensuring he ate, and a convenient excuse to speak frankly and freely with her grandfather. “And how was the evening muster?”

“Eventful,” she mutters as she takes her seat. The desk is a little low for her height and she finds herself hunching over as she sets down the discharge papers. “Three more guards are filing for immediate discharge, each citing _personal_ reasons.” For them to abandon everything they had ever known, all for the sake of some half-thought hope… it was wholly inconceivable to Lyna.

“Indeed. Will the guard be able to maintain a full watch rotation?” Their eyes meet as he picks up the papers; after so long of his face being covered, she was discomfited by those piercing scarlet eyes. They seemed too young and too old all at once, and as such she tended to avoid looking at him full in the face. Better to focus on that which was familiar.

“With some adjustments, yes. But if anyone else resigns—and they are certain to—we’ll have to start aggressively recruiting again, and incentivizing those who remain. I know this will require a motion to increase the guard’s budget, but—”

“—it is a small expense for our people’s safety, as I’m sure you understand,” The Exarch says astutely. “I’m sure the motion will pass without dispute.” Food untouched, he picks up a sealed letter and slices it open with his letter opener, skimming through contents quickly. “Hmm. The dwarves are requesting a trade route. How irregular, yet convenient for us. Perhaps they’d be willing to spare some more curious dwarves…?”

Lyna gestures to his plate.“Sir. Your food.”

He gives her a wry smile before setting down the letter. “Ah, how could I forget. Here I thought you missed my company, but you’re really here to ensure this senile old man eats his food.” He picks up his fork, spearing a sliver of salmon.

Lyna shrugs, making a point to take a bite of her own spinach sauté. “You made me eat my greens when I was a kit, so I’m simply returning the favor. Besides, you forget your food more oft than not when the Warrior is away.”

“She returns tomorrow,” he says, almost too casually. “I have made significant strides in my work with Beq Lugg, although there is still much to be done.” His voice belies disinterest, but his body gives him away; how his ears perk at the mere mention of her, his tail lashing beneath his robes, the flush to his cheeks. She had known he was hopelessly in love with the Warrior since she first saw him running to greet her at the Exarch gate all those moons ago, yet he still tried (and failed) to disguise such things, and time had only exacerbated the matter.

“All the more reason for you to eat your dinner, old man,” she chides as he picks up yet another letter.

“I’d scarcely say it’s going anywhere.”

“That may be, but it _is_ getting colder. How fares the Warrior of Darkness?”

“From what I hear, well; she is cleaning up matters of import with an old comrade, so says Alisaie. The people of Norvrandt will be glad to have her return.” She watches with some amusement as he reaches for the salmon fillet, and brings it up to the letter as if to slice it open. His brows furrow when he fails in his task, his widening with realization, then dropping the fillet to the plate with a barking laugh. “You have the right of it, Lyna,” he chuckles, wiping his hand on a napkin, “Wicked white, I _am_ going senile. Please forgive me.”

Still chuckling to himself, he finally begins eating in earnest, but Lyna’s appetite has left her. Replacing it, curiosity burns deep in her belly, unquenched and neglected, but still smoldering after long years of swallowing down questions.

The words leave her lips before she can bite her tongue on them.

“What does she mean to you—The Warrior?”

He blinks up at her with some confusion. “Whatever do you mean? S-She is the savior of Novrandt, the Warrior of D—”

“—Don’t give me that,” she snaps. “You know what I mean.”

His brows raise in surprise, and regret fills her heart at her harsh words. Even in her youth, she had never raised her voice to him. “Exarch, I—”

“… She… is very dear to me,” he murmurs, “in many, many ways. I often find it is difficult to keep my composure in matters regarding her, and I apologize for my indelicacy, Lyna.”

“There’s more to that,” she sighs, “I know there is, but I shall not press. You have been… frankly, a different man since your abduction, since you returned from the depths of the Tempest. One might even call you _happy._ And glad as I may be to see you so…” She edges her finger around the rim of her water glass, mustering the courage within herself to speak the following words, “you are preparing for their departure, rather, _slaving_ away in preparation. What happens when they leave? When _she_ leaves?”

He speaks automatically, fluidly. “Well, the Crystarium has been planned as such that it will be self-sufficient without—”

Her eyes widen in horror. “ _Without?”_

He opens his mouth, closes it, winces at himself. These moments were rare, fleeting things in their time together—a slip of words, the Exarch usually laughing them off as a result of overwork, and the people of the Crystarium more than willing to allow him as many excuses as he required. Lyna herself had seen this a half dozen times, the most recent being two years ago when he recounted the details of Mystel anatomy in the first person, only to stop himself and blame it on a scholarly article he’d read.

Never, in all their time together, had he exposed himself so thoroughly.

 _This,_ she realizes as she stares the man who had cared for her all these years, _is why the guards are resigning. For hope. For themselves._

“I misspoke, Lyna, I—”

“I do not know why I am surprised,” she sighs, taking a bite of food again, if only to encourage him to do the same. “with the zeal you’ve shown in this matter with Beq Lugg, it is only too obvious you are… _personally_ invested in such matters, are you not?”

He nods, sighing heavily. “It is… an uncertain thing. One I scarcely allow myself to believe. I ask… that you do not tell her, nor the Scions, of this until I can confirm it to be true.”

“Of course,” she breathes, feeling blessed that she was allowed to be his confidant, for once.She would be trusted with at least one of his myriad secrets before he left them forever. “I… I am happy,” she chokes, tears threatening to overwhelm her, “for you, for her. Truly. No one deserves it more.”

And though her words were honest, the sorrow gripping her heart was still just as true. 


	4. clinch.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated M for: unironically lewd hand-holding, and sexual content.**  
>  You didn't know it could feel like this.  
> WoL/Hooded!Exarch.

**clinch** | _noun_

\ _ˈklinch_ \

a fastening by means of a nail, rivet, or bolt

to hold tightly, either fighting or in love

to make final or irrefutable

* * *

The carpenter’s guildmaster’s diatribe on the specifics of the many types of grain in Lakeland oak fades into the background when the Crystal Exarch’s hand brushes yours beneath the conference table. Alisaie and Alphinaud, to your left, are muttering amongst themselves about the specifics of the meeting, conspirators to the end, and ignoring your presence. It is an insignificant gesture, one of casual nonchalance, his bare spoken thumb brushing your own. It is, undoubtedly, nothing but an accident, meaningless and hapless in nature.

Yet it is purest, most idiotic impulse that drives you to twine your littlest finger in his, a desperate bid for affection, from this most distant of figures in your life.

You glance up shyly, expecting to see his shadowed face looking down on you with shock, perhaps even fully wrenching away from his seat in disgust. But the Exarch remains perfectly still, leaning his chin on his crystalline hand as his full attention is divested to the guildmaster’s weekly meeting.

And his hand below the table doesn’t move an ilm.

You wouldn’t be able to express, to yourself, to your friends, or to the Twelves themselves, why you take his hand in yours and placed it on your clothed knee. Why you gasp as if scalded when his fingers dig into the knobby joint, leather bands flexing around his knuckles as he easily encircles your knee with his hand. Stranger still, why you slide your smaller hand into his, lacing your fingers together in an inextricable labyrinthine clinch, your pulse rioting in your throat with the delicious profanity of it all.

His thumb runs a dizzying path down the soft skin between your thumb and forefinger, before digging the pad into your flesh with steady, unfazed pressure, massaging sensual circles over and over into the tensed muscle of your hand. You bite your tongue around a gasp. It feels impossibly intimiate, expressing a sensuality you hadn’t thought anyone, let alone _the Crystal Exarch_ capable of.

The Exarch slips his hand from yours and you clench around the ghost of his presence in despair before the pads of his fingers press inexorably into the calloused flesh of your palm. You splay your hand open for him without a second thought, caught in the push and pull between terror and yearning at what he might do next. Long, lean fingers press into the bruised flesh, kneading promises of comfort, relaxation, and sanctuary with every press into your hand. You feel him skirt down the curve of your life line, let out a stuttering gasp when he traces your line of fate from the tender flesh of your wrist all the way to the webbing in the middle of your fingers with a touch like levinbolts.

And suddenly, his hand closes around your wrist hard enough to bruise, and if you were not already seated, your knees would have given out.

“I must wonder, if fastening the boards with clinches of rope would be insufficient, guildmaster, might be otherwise seek other means? Is there no way to replicate the aetherial barrier on, say, a much smaller scale?” The Exarch asks, all academic interest and scholarly attitude as he holds your very pulse in his hand, and all your mind is a razed, depraved blank:could he fit both your wrists in one of his hands as he pins them above you? How would those lips would taste on yours as he takes, takes, _takes_ what he wants without asking? How would his hot length feel _in_ you as he fucked you into submission? Would it be furious and angry, or would worship every curve and ilm of your body?

His query prompts one of the blacksmiths into action, and he releases his grip on you only to slide two of his fingers between yours in a gesture that mimics far too closely what you thought it might feel like for him to part your folds.

You clench your teeth around a whimper, squeezing your thighs together for a modicum of relief in his endless blissful torment.

The Exarch slowly massages each of your fingers in turn, worrying your joints between his fingers, working the flesh with a strength that penetrates even your thickest of calluses, before encircling your finger with his hand and popping the joint with a curious twist, leaving your hand languid and well-worn. After he finishes working over your thumb, your fingers tangle again, and this time he arches your hand back, eliciting a not unpleasant crack from your wrist. As he makes to move away from you, you flex hard around him, not ready to let him go, not ready to say goodbye to the most physical connection you’d had in _moons_. You wanted to return, at least in some way, the inexorable pleasure and safety he’d brought you with this simple gesture.

And he stays, the leather bands of his hand digging into your own as you chart his rugged knuckles, tracing the rivers of veins and taut tendons as the guildmasters speak amongst themselves. You wonder if his skin would feel like this everywhere else, unbearably warm and delightfully soft beneath your fingers, and you shudder at the thought of his crystal hand tracing ice down your own body, further and further down the arch of your hips and into—

“Thank you, for your time,” the Exarch smiles to the guildmasters, the meeting apparently concluded without an onze of your awareness. “We shall keep your suggestions in mind as we prepare to rebuild Holminster Switch.” He squeezes your hand gratefully before letting go, standing up smoothly. “Is aught amiss, Warrior of Darkness?” The corner of his lip quirks in a curious smile as he looks down on you.

You had felt less scandalized after sex.

“No,” you breathe, “nothing at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the bookclub, we have a running joke about 'lewd handholding', which is just a fun way of saying sex. i thought it'd be fun to write a fic with truly lewd handholding. ..... so this is what you got.  
> ... i'm gonna go back to my dumpster now


	5. matter of fact.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated T for: Spicy feelings, rough kissing.**  
>  You confront the Crystal Exarch on his lies.  
> WoL/Exarch with some spice.

**matter of fact** | _adjective_

\ ˌ _ma-tər-ə(v)-ˈfakt_ \

being plain, straight forward, or unemotional

adhering to the unembellished facts

* * *

The Exarch— _G’raha Tia_ , you reminded yourself—had avoided you at every turn since you’d returned from your confrontation with Hades. The night of the celebration he had retreated to his tower, claiming the fatigue of an old man, and in the following suns he kept himself in the constant company of either the Scions or the Crystarium’s people. It had been a moon since you’d seen him, and in the interim you had made up your mind on what to do with G’raha Tia.

His lies were without count, his secrets still yet to be explored and laid bare. The Exarch may have done the right thing, but it was no balm against the sting of his deception. How could any of you trust him in the struggle to come? How could he be depended upon to stay true upon pressure, to not take away your already limited sense of agency for the sake of what he felt was honorable?

“Late, isn’t it, for reading?” You call to him. The Exarch’s ears flatten to his graying scarlet hair; he looks up at you from a heavy leather tome, dozens of similar books sprawled open across the Cabinet of Curiosities’ reading table. The oil lamps burn low, the evening having banished the Crystarium residents into their homes, and even sweet Moren was nowhere to be seen.

He was trapped, and judging by the frown twitching at his lips, he knew it. 

“Warrior,” he smiles casually. “I was not expecting you to return so quickly. How fares the Source?”

“Well,” you tell him, your voice casual and dull. “There are some matters with the Garlean Empire, but our comrades are handling it well. What in hellfire are you doing up so late?”

“Researching,” he informs you, gesturing to the books. He stands, stiff as a lance, rolling the fatigue out of his shoulders. “Unfortunately, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve exhausted the Cabinet’s wealth of information and will need to seek my answers elsewhere. At any rate, it is passing time for me to rest; Lyna will have my head if she finds out I’ve stayed up so late again. Shall we speak on the morrow, with the rest of the Scions?”

As G’raha makes to close the book before him, you press a gloved hand over it. “Actually,” you smirk, staring him full in the face, enjoying the way his scarlet eyes widen, “I had hoped to speak with you _alone_.”

“I am all ears, Warrior,” he stammers, letting go of the tome.

You had rehearsed a well-spoken, considerate speech in your mind before arriving, but it’s wholly gone now, erased by his damnable intoxicating presence.

 _Pleasantries were always Alphinaud’s forte,_ you think to yourself sardonically before speaking.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t trust you,” you say simply, crossing your arms, “one whit, in fact. You kept the truth of my condition from me _and_ my friends, you willingly let me take a risk on the bid that you could _kill yourself_ to save my hide, not even thinking that something might come in the way of such things, you kept the truth of what happened to my _friend_ from me…” You grit your teeth against the fury. “How hypocritical of you, to act so _fondly_ of me when you would hide the truth from me at every turn. At least _Emet-Selch_ did me the courtesy of being honest.”

The Exarch says nothing, instead focusing on closing books and neatly stacking them, as if building a wall between you and him. His face remains neutral, but the shimmer in his eyes gives him away. You words had found their mark, and you weren’t entirely certain you regretted them.

“I understand,” he says, softly, _defeated_. “I cannot blame you for feeling as such, and I can only hope to make up for my falsehoods by correcting what I have wro—”

“—If you would act with such conviction, I would at least appreciate you standing by your actions.”

His head jerks up at your ire. His eyes burn the selfsame fire you saw when he saved you from Emet-Selch, when he summoned the Warriors from beyond the rift in your direst moment, and you wonder if you underestimated your mark. 

“I would rather have your ire, your hatred, your _contempt_ for all that I am than see you dead,” his voice is deadly quiet, every syllable laced with bitter venom. “And do not think that I would not do what I did a _thousand_ times over, even if you were not the damned Warrior of Light. Do not mistake my passivity for cowardice.”

You find yourself backed against a bookshelf, the hard spines of tomes of untold knowledge digging into your back. “Was there no other way?” You plead, with him or yourself you know not. “No way you could have been honest? No other course of action—?”

The Exarch stalks forward, shoulders squared now. Though his staff is cast aside, in his posture he holds all the regality of his station, the careful control and incalculable power stored over the course of a century. “No,” he says, smiling bitterly, “there was not. You forget, Warrior, I had a hundred years to run through this scenario, and while I had plans—dozens, all told—in place for worst-case scenarios, most of which involved telling the truth, keeping you in the dark was the least risky of all. And in every single one of those scenarios, I was to die. My death was a sure thing from the start, Warrior. I risk a _paradox_ by existing wrongly as I do. Yet I will not rest til I correct what I have done.”

His arm slams into the shelf by your head, and while the Exarch is not a tall man, he _feels_ fulms above you, as angry and commanding as the broadest of the Ronso, crowding you thoroughly into the bookshelf, rendering you small and helpless. His eyes are fiery garnets burning into yours.

“I want to trust you,” you find yourself pleading with him, “I know how much you’ve risked, but I cannot… G’raha, you would do what you did even if I wasn’t the Warrior?”

“Yes.”

“ _Why?”_

He falters, looking down and away from you, sighing heavily. “Is it not obvious, Warrior?”

You bite your lip. And thus was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? You could mistrust and hate him all you wanted, but at the core of your feelings, your anger…

You hated him for lying to you because you loved him.

But he had lied to you because he loved you too dearly to risk anything else.

“Come here, damn it,” you growl, reaching up to tug his head down to yours.

He tastes like stale blood and kindled flame, his breath hotter than dragonfire as he smashes his mouth against yours, shoving you into the bookshelf with crushing strength. And _gods_ , how you’d wanted this, how you’d yearned for it, entertaining dark, twisted fantasies of him stealing into your quarters from the very first day on this shard. His hands slide down your body, curving around your bottom to hoist you up, and you purr with contentment as you wrap your legs around the steady strength of his core, his tongue twisting in your mouth as you knot your fingers in his hair hard enough to hurt.

“Don’t lie to me again,” you murmur between open-mouthed kisses, chasing after his mouth when he tries to pull away. “Never again, Raha.”

There is grief in his eyes as he promises. “Never.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm the world's biggest exarch apologist, but i thought it'd be fun to confront some of his criticisms. also i rewatched the pride & prejudice ["i love you, most ardently"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbQbrSSn9eQ) scene a million times, so.


	6. paroxysm.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated M for: This is a bit of a dark!fic, so expect themes of fear, angst, implied character death, and some violence.**  
>  An AU in which the Warrior of Light takes the mantle of Titania.  
> WoL/Exarch.

**paroxysm** | _noun_

\ ˈper-ək-ˌsi-zəm \

A fit, attack, or sudden increase in symptoms of an illness

A sudden violent emotion or action; an outburst

* * *

The fae folk are inebriated on merriment and lost to the throes of ecstasy as the Exarch makes his way through the winding, rolling hills of Il Mheg. The tangles of roses, pomace, and violets that line each pathway reek like rotting corpses and render him nauseous as each step takes him closer to the newly coronated King and her retinue. The echo of his footsteps on the flagstones sound hollow and forboding as he waits in the foyer.

“Ah, if it isn’t the Crystal Exarch!” Feo Ul bristles from the shadows, their wings an autumnal feast made incarnate. “The King will see you now.”

“I take it the faefolk have taken a liking to their new sovereign?” He asks, forcing his voice into a semblance of passivity. He clutches his staff in his crystallized fist, his sole anchor in this world with the loss of the Warrior.

“Well, why wouldn’t they!” They grin, all razored teeth and menace. “There is none more lovely and fearsome in all these lands than my _[adorable sapling]._ Who else could save Il Mheg, bring back the night for us all, restore the glory of the _[fae folk]_?”

He has no words for them. _But_ , he asks himself desperately as he follows the cheerful pixie to the throne room, _did it truly come to this?_

“King Titania,” a pixie calls with an explosive giggle as he enters, “the Crystal Exarch.”

“Hmm,” King Titania murmurs to herself, “how curious indeed.” Her voice is transcendent and melodious, purer than any crystal bell, so distinctly _hers_ but… twisted. Altered. _Broken._

He is no fool, blinded as he is by love or otherwise. The Exarch sinks to his knees in a low bow of subservience, still-spoken heart throbbing painfully in his chest as he stares down at the dense carpet of greenery. “Your Majesty,” he calls. “I came to wish you _[good tidings]_ upon your coronation.”

Her barking laugh is phantasmal and lovely, ringing in his ears as if deafened. “Do not bore me with such diatribes, Exarch. Stand—and _take off that ridiculous hood.”_

He obeys the first command, hesitating on the latter, his hands trembling. “Y-Your Majes—”

She huffs with the impatience only exuded by royalty. It is the first time he has been able to look at her, and he is taken aback wholly by her radiance. She is much the same, but utterly _transformed_ by the powers of the King’s regalia. Every angle of her has been honed to a cutting sharpness, her lips curved with a smile of menace and passing beauty as she considers him. Her wings, scintillating translucent finery, arch behind her and render her an angelic vision. The King’s staff lays slack in her hand as she watches him, but her long, cruel fingers twitch with the urge to use it.

“You were able to boss me around, before I took the throne,” she hisses, and her voice is as high and cold as a winter’s gale, “but you will agree with me that the power dynamics have been duly overthrown, have they not?”

He thinks quickly, considering all the myriad plans he had conspired with Urianger over the past three winters, and not a single one of them took into consideration the Warrior voluntarily taking Titania’s mantle. In the gamble of his identity, he had lost. He had no choice but to lay his deceptions bare before her, or risk a swift, pointless death.

He raises both hands to his face and unhoods himself, shuddering at the cool wind on his bared face and hair. 

Her fair brow quirks with interest, and she huffs. “It is as I suspected, then. G’raha Tia, was it not?” Her tongue turns his name into a profane curse with its transformative beauty. 

He clenches his teeth against the torment of his name on her lips, scorching tears pricking his eyes. “I-It is, your majesty. If you would permit—”

She snarls; it is an unhinged and _terrifying_ sound, followed by a blinding flutter of wings; two pixies take each of his arms and drag him upwards into the air, his staff tumbling to the ground uselessly. He had forgotten what an unknown quantity the King’s humors were; he wouldn’t live to see the next bell if he continued to disrespect her in such a careless manner.

“You wish to know why I did not abdicate, G’raha?” She asks him archly.

“If you see fit to disclose such matters, yes.” One of the pixies' claws pierce the flesh of his arm, and he feels the warm liquid dribble sickeningly down his chest.

She snaps her fingers, a sound so sharp he flinches as if struck. The pixies, muttering their reticence, drop him unceremoniously to the floor. Even with the cushion of the grass, he grunts with pain, stumbling to his hands and knees before the King once more.

“A certain Ascian—Emet-Selch, he calls himself—informed me of my condition, that you _willfully_ put upon me,” she snarls venomously. “This Light that will kill me, that _you_ vowed I could handle. He proposed the most effective solution would be to kill you, take the Throne, and then seize the Tower. While I am still considering the former, becoming King seemed the logical solution to my mortality." 

Strangely, after seeing the Warrior twisted such, his death held little fear for him. “I had a plan,” he says, scrabbling for his weighty golden rod, leaning heavily upon it to find his feet, blood dripping into his scarlet eyes from a cut on his scalp, “to save you, to save _both_ Shards. I swore to you history would be unwritten, and I had every intention of keeping my promise, _Warrior._ ”

“But you didn’t _tell me_ ,” she shrieks, “you treated me like a _[fumbling girlchild]_ and forced my hand, G’raha Tia!”

 _Kill me,_ he pleads within himself, to either the Twelve or Titania or the shadow of the Warrior, _save us both this pain._

“I apologize,” he voice cracks, shards of broken glass lodged in his throat, “for ever deceiving you.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to make up for your lies,” her anger lies dormant; she purrs to him with the threat of a rabid coeurl, “as my newest _[sweet plaything.]_ ”

His shock must be laid bare on his face for her, because she explodes into a paroxysm of laughter, the mirth overtaking her as only it can consume the fae folk. “You thought I would let you _go?_ After all you’ve done? Perhaps if you survive my fun, but until then…” The butt of her staff echoes through the throne, the tolling decreeing his fate. 

As the vines close in around him, he cannot decide what is more horrifying; the way her once beautiful face twists with purest bloodthirsty menace, or the languor that overtakes him at the thought of finally being _hers_ in the most final, indelible way left to him. The small part of his mind not overtaken by worship or fear _roars_ at him; the only course of action would be to kill her, to play the unassuming, obedient, enthralled _[plaything]_ and catch her in an inopportune moment, her guard laid bare for him…

But the reality of the situation has never been more clear to him, never more obvious. He was incapable of laying a hand against her, bound so by guilt and damned love for her. 

And so, he surrenders to the King’s madness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow i really hurt my own damn self writing this huh


	7. nonagenarian.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated M for: Potential claustrophobia warning, mild sexual content.**  
>  You and the Exarch go ghost-hunting. Fluff and bickering, X-Files style.  
> WoL/Exarch.

**nonagenarian** | _noun_

/ _ˌnänəjəˈnerēən,ˌ_ /

someone who is between ninety and ninety-nine years of age

* * *

You’d had nightmares about the depths of the Crystal Tower since you first explored its enigmatic maze two winters ago with Rammbroes, Cid, and G’raha Tia. At every turn were untold horrors and unimaginable frights given form lurking in the corners, threatening to grab you and launch you into its depthless depths, never to be found again. Your fears hadn’t abated when G’raha locked himself in the Tower on the promise of a distant future; while his twin scarlet eyes might wield the blood of the ancients, seeing its glimmering spire on Mor Dhona’s horizon filled you with a mix of fear and heartsickness.

You are admittedly less than thrilled when the Crystal Exarch requests your help on what he calls an “extermination mission,” but your ire was abated with the knowledge that today, a crisp spring morning straddling the gap between winter and spring, was G’raha Tia’s name day. It was a priceless knowledge you extracted from Lyna over several dwarven beers, and she begged you to keep it secret, but also encouraged you to use such information as you would.

You cross your arms, heavy armor clinking as you shift your weight. “There is _still_ more to be killed? I had assumed when I slaughtered The Tycoon that would be the end of it.”

The Exarch is bent low over a sprawling, hand-scrawled map across his desk, comprised of clever folding pages which fold and unfold to reveal more and more of the tower. “I have attempted—truthfully in vain—to map the Tower’s myriad halls and corridors.” He flips through a series of schematics to one that is largely blank, save for his own scrawl across the pages. “Last year, I discovered a fourth library, one only referenced in an annotation of Sophia’s journals. Whatever information in that library might help me better understand the Allagan’s talent of imbuing blood with memories and data, and thus, send you and yours home.”

“That sounds _far_ too easy. What challenges await us?”

“Two challenges. The door’s lock eludes even my control over the Tower.” He gestures to a complex mechanism to the right, resembling the Allagan cubes you’d seen him utilize before. “I… _might_ have a solution to such a problem, but if I’m nothing but a red spot on the ground by the time I get there, well, it’s a useless effort.”

“Something tells me I’m not going to like what you’re about to say.”

He sighs, running a hand through his scarlet hair, pushing it out of his eyes. “There is… well, I _suspect_ it is a Zaghnal with some sort of dampening field, but…”

“… You’re saying it’s invisible.”

“ _If_ it is even a Zaghnal, yes.”

“… Why do I feel like this is going to be a ghost.”

He huffs irritably, giving you a tired smile. The bags under his eyes had only grown worse in recent moons, and you ache to ease the dark circles and his weariness. “The existence of trace amounts of aether resembling so-called _ghosts_ is fringe science at best and far more likely to be complete superstition perpetuated by the sleep-deprived and drunk.”

“There are stranger things,” you counter, “and much we still do not understand about aetherical compounds. Is such a thing really so far-fetched?”

“It simply doesn’t make _sense._ Take the existence of other shards, for example. Asides from a handful of us, most have and _will_ never transcend the amount of space and time to venture to another shard. However, aetherial scientists have _known_ of the existence of other Shards for a millennia, because of other signs and arithmetic that leads to that explanation. Aetherial science does not preclude to the idea of…” he sighs with the disgust of a scholar explaining elementary principles, “… _ghosts._ ”

You shrug, levying the heavy weight of your greatsword across your back into a more comfortable position. “It is not my place to question your science, but I have seen strange and stranger still things in my adventures. Including those I suspect are ghosts.”

“I assure you,” the Exarch smiles, his canine glinting, “this is no ghost.”

In the brightly lit sphere of his office, it was easy to believe the Exarch’s self-assured and knowledgable words. Descending down winding staircases to nowhere, the Exarch springing open trapdoors with a wave of his stave and halls that go on without end and darken into oblivion… your hairs stand more and more on end with each step, every cryptic shadow cast by the eery aetherlight giving you cause to jump near out of your skin.

“I thought you were an extension of the tower, Raha,” you complain when he halts again to consult his maps, “shouldn’t you _know_ where everything is?”

He fishes a quill out of a pocket of his robes before making a scrawling note on a diagram of the hallway. “That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?” He folds it back up beneath his arm, stepping forward into an especially darkened hallway. You follow him with some trepidation; Raha might have been more at home than ever exploring mysterious historical secrets, butyou were more familiar bashing brains and fighting armies. The suspense of what could attack you at any moment _crawled_ beneath your skin, comfortable though you were with darkness itself.

“If it were only that simple,” he calls to you. “I can _feel_ the Tower’s lifeforce as surely as my own, and while I have access to her wellsprings of power… theTower keeps her own secrets from me, like anyone would. It is much the same as knowing a person; it is one thing to care for them, and another to explore every ilm of their soul.” He says it with the passion of one talking of a loved one, and it causes a blush to rise in your cheeks.

“Are we still talking about the Tower?” You ask incredulously.

He laughs, stifling it behind his free hand. “The advice is applicable to many areas of life, my friend.”

“Is that what it feels like, to you? Like they— _she_ is a friend?” _A lover_ , you think, but it goes unsaid.

He hums, turning over your question in his mind. “Friend is too kind a word, and implies some sort of equal footing. Perhaps I might have thought so in my younger years, but no.”

“And how old _are_ you, anyway?”

“Guess.” There is a teasing smile in his voice.

“You’re not a… a _nonagenarian,_ are you?” You ask tentatively.

“Oh, heavens no. I wouldn’t be so out of breath if I was.”

You snort. You’d been struggling all day to keep up with his pace, the enthusiasm for adventure apparent in every ilm of his body. “Alright, then. A centenarian?”

“No.”

You frown. “a _supercentenarian?”_

He’s silent, and you have the distinct feeling he’s shaking with laughter at your expense.

“I am one-hundred and twenty-five— _six_ summers,” he tells you, “sans the time I slumbered in the Tower. With that, that’s roughly… ah, two-hundred and thirty…”

“Either way,” you smile, “you’re quite the old man.”

Even in the darkness you can tell he’s rolling his eyes at your sass. “No need to rub it in, _child_.” He halts in his tracks; you were following him so closely you bump right into his back before stumbling backwards.

“Aye?”

“I… this is not the correct corridor.”

You let out a pained groan, falling to your knees. “You’re _kidding_.”

“I wish I were, but I’m afraid I’m quite serious. Ironworks must have… hmm…” He leans against the wall, the stripe of aetherlight illuminating his features as he frowns over the map again. “No, we do _seem_ to be in the correct position, but this hallway should have ended and given way to stairs by now…”

Suddenly, a freezing gust of wind _rips_ through the hallway, snatching the map from the Exarch’s hand and launching it down the hall.

 _“Thou wouldst disturb my slumber…..?”_ The question, pitched in a high voice, rattles your very bones and sends a chill of terror down your spine. You hesitate to unsheathe your weapon before the Exarch grabs the hand on the hilt of your sword.

_“Run!”_

For all your sarcasm, you never question the Exarch’s orders; you’re hot on his heels down an alcove, nearly missing the discrete door he slides into until he reaches out and yanks you in, enclosing his arms around you protectively. The darkness is impregnable, and you hear Raha reach out and whip the door closed, locking you in an uncomfortably tight space. You hear nothing except for the rattling sounds of your breathing, his hitching on the inhale. You struggle to steady your own breathing, and try to take stake of yourself. In your rush, your greatsword must have came unclasped from its holster; ordinarily your back would feel naked without its presence, were you not crammed so closely into the Exarch’s chest.

Oh.

Thall’s _balls._

“You need better maps,” you mutter, the heat rising in your cheeks as you fail to ignore how tightly you’re pressed together. The room is near coffin-sized, likely used once-upon-a-time as a supply closet. There is maybe an ilm of clearance between you and the wall, and you twist away as far from the Exarch as you can, he pressing himself the opposite way, but its little use. Your legs are still entwined, and every breath closes that little distance between you and him.

“Please tell me you’re not claustrophobic.” You try to keep the whine out of your voice.

“No. Are you?”

“No—well, maybe a little.” Perhaps the excuse of fear would cover the tremble in your voice; with every breath the Exarch’s chest brushes your shoulders, and you’re all-too painfully aware of the compromising nature of your haunches brushing his front.

His hand strokes your armored arm, and you nearly leap out of your skin at the touch. “We need only wait until whatever _that_ was—”

“—it was _definitely_ a ghost—”

“—which was most assuredly _not_ a ghost passes.” He finishes with some heat, his breath brushing the nape of your neck and setting gooseflesh aflame. Instead of arguing, you tap your foot impatiently—that is, until his hands come hard at your hips. You squeak at the touch, heart racing.

“For all that is still good in this world, _please_ cease your damned moving.” His voice takes on a dark edged quality that is _delicious._

You scowl. “I’m not used to being so damn _still_ —”

He taps his fingers on your hip. The motion lances levin _straight_ to your loins. “Would you understand if I said there are things of a biological nature which men everywhere have pleaded an inability to control?”

“Oh— _oh!”_ You squeak, hands flying to your face. “Gods, we’ve really got to get out of here. Hang on a second, will you?” Bracing yourself against the walls, you twist your body—wincing as you hipcheck his groin—and flatten your back against the wall. “Is this better?”

He sighs, bracing his hands against the wall in front of him. His warm breath is full in your face, and your chest brushes his abdomen with each breath. He was _compromisingly_ close to you. “As good as it can be,” he rumbles.

_This is not better at all._

He twists to the side to press his ear to the door, leg sliding between yours to brace himself. You cross your arms over your chest. “It _sounds_ safe,” he mutters, before trying the door.

It doesn’t budge.

“Wicked—” He forces it again, this time his crystal arm glowing with an unknown spell. The door stays locked. “Of all the _godsdamned_ times!” He growls, slamming his fist into it. The wall shudders with the force, but the door makes no move.

You lean your head back against the wall and pray for a swift death.

“This space is far too enclosed for a fire spell,” he mutters to himself, “and the lockpicking mechanism I brought is useless against something as _ridiculous_ as a godsdamned jammed door.”

 _Dear Azeyma,_ you plead, _please kill me before I either kill or kiss this man._

Azeyma keeps her own council.

“How long until we run out of air?” You ask weakly.

“A few bells, if not longer. I had told Lyna to come looking for us if she didn’t hear wor—oh, _of course!_ ” His robes shuffle. “Captain? Captain, please respond.” Silence. You hear him yank the linkpearl out of his ear. “Godsdammit all, I can’t see to try to tamper with it,” he mutters. He leans full forward into the wall, crowding you with his space. He smells like pine needles and clean sweat. “We will simply have to wait until Lyna can rescue us.”

 _Is a miracle too much to ask?_ You scream to Hydaelyn.

Evidently, it is.

“So much for ‘master of the Crystal Tower’,” you say sardonically.

“I did forewarn you that this would not be so straight-forward.”

“And you have the balls to say that _wasn’t_ a ghost!”

He groans, leaning further down into you. His voice takes on a gravelly, velvety quality that causes you to clench your thighs together. “There is insufficient evidence either way on that _thing’s_ nature. It is as likely to be a Tonberry as it is to be a cursed ghost.”

Your interest in this fight of semantics is waning; his body heat so _close_ to yours is stifling, and his heady scent, along with the intoxication of having someone you’d admired from afar for so long close to you, is driving sensible thought from your mind.

“Lyna told me today was your name day.” You say instead.

He is silent for a long while. “Did she?”

“She did. I… had wanted this to be better,” you say in a small voice, “for you.”

Raha laughs; it is a warm, delicious noise, right in your ear. “If you think there is elsewhere I’d rather be then adventuring by your side, you are sorely mistaken, my friend.”

The sentiment is unexpectedly touching, and you reach upwards, fumbling over the soft planes of his face to card your fingers through his hair. He leans into your touch, and you arc your head upwards to kiss his cheek. “Happiest of name days, Raha,” you purr.

He turns at the penultimate second, and your lips find his instead.

Were tempers not so high, the space not so tight, maybe it could have remained a gentle, tentative first kiss, waylaid by the promise of a thorough discussion. If you hadn’t wanted to kiss him for _quite_ so long, and he doubtless longer, it might have stayed a chaste, blushing affair.

Instead, your tongue slips between his parted lips, and your teeth clash hard enough to hurt as his hands grip your hips with crushing strength, leveraging you against the wall to lift you into his arms. You hum your contentment as your arms wind around his shoulders, drawing him close and tangling in this hair and bucking your hips into his for a modicum of relief. Each successive kiss is punishing, all tongue and slick with none of the usual niceties. 

You think to yourself g _ods above this is embarrassing!_ as your legs wind around his waist,your greaves doubtless leaving bruises in his sides as he yanks your hair to the side before descending into the soft flesh of your neck with a hundred scorching, claiming kisses. You whine low in your throat when his teeth nip into the delicate juncture between neck and shoulder. Your hands rove over his clothed body, delighting in how his breath hitches against your throat when you stroke at his silken ears, laughing breathlessly when he kisses you harder, mumbling lovesick promises into your skin.

“Wanted… this… _you…_ ” he growls, coming up to kiss you once more. He kisses like he has all the time and more in the world, charting the taste of you with teeth and tongue and humming his pleasure as you twist against him. Close though you were, it was not _near_ enough.

“It might take some doing, but maybe we can get this armor off,” you gasp when he lets you go long enough to move to the scorched heat of your ear. He groans, bucking into you—and you _feel_ his hard length press into your core, and your determination to remove as many layers as possible between you and him grows to an immediate and imperative concern.

“Even you know that is an exercise in futility,” he grates out.

“Perhaps, but…” and a _wicked_ idea overtakes you and you whisper into his ear, squeaking as he smashes his mouth into yours again, palming your breasts over your armor.

“ _You… are—”_

He never finishes his sentence; the door slides open with a _woosh_ , letting in blinding light...

...and one particularly harried looking Vii.

“Ex— _ohmygods.”_ Lyna squeaks with utmost horror, covering her eyes and spinning away. “I thought you were in trouble or worse, _dead_ and it turns out you’re—!”

“I-I-It is not what it seems—!” The Exarch stammers, letting you go. Your legs tremble as they find the floor again, and you hurriedly try to correct the mess he's made of you. 

His hair is hopelessly mussed, a scarlet lovebite blooming on his bare neck, and there is no telling what you yourself look like.

“My lord, if you had wanted… _space_ on your godsdamned name day you need only have asked!” Lyna says hotly. "I mean I _wondered_ if you two were, but—”

“Lyna, I assure you, this is simply a misunderstanding—!”

You bury your head in your hands, wholly out of excuses. 

It is _exactly_ what it looks like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can take the trash out of x-files but you can't take the x-files out of the trash. consider this an apology for all the feels as-of late.


	8. clamor.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated T for: discussions of the Eighth Umbral Calamity Timeline and the accompanying angst, and discussion of canonical character death.**  
>  The Crystal Exarch considers his death.

**clamor** | _noun_

\ _ˈkla-mər_ \

A loud, continuous noise

Insistent public protest

a noisy shouting

* * *

There is a certain peace in knowing the irrefutable circumstances of one’s own death.

Mortality does not sink in for the Spoken until old age. In a realm of adventurers, it is an easy thing to put aside your death for later worries; there is no time to fret over what may come when you fight tooth and nail for every gil in your coin-purse. Death would not put food in your mouth, an able sword at your back, companions at your hand. Scholars who call the tomb-like libraries of Sharlayan _home_ need not concern themselves with mortality, for what will be the point if they die before they write their names indelibly in the annals of history itself? A matter for only the shrewdest of philosophers to while away hours considering. 

When the doors of Syrcus Tower shut behind me, I did not then consider my death. The Tower assured me I had time plenty for such matters, for my destiny waited at the end of one long slumber, shimmering with childhood promises made physical, every book I had ever read manifesting before me once I opened my eyes. How charming a thing, to curl up in the seat of a throne the most cosmic of the Allagans called theirs with such naive aspirations.

In the Eighth Umbral Calamity, death was a close friend.

I awoke into a nightmare undreamed by any of the Seventh Astral Era, for such horrors seemed inconceivable. To those who had been born into this time, the stench of death was more common than a sunlit breeze, the grieving process stripped down to the barest of necessities. I was not a changed man when I awakened, and I did not have the calluses of brutal conditioning to soften the blows of seeing Eorzea ripped asunder again and again. The following year was, and still is, a blur; a blur of comrades far too young meeting their demise at yet another bandit raid, a smear of schematics and maintenance written in the shaking hand of Ironwork’s paragon, Cid Garlond, and stricken out and corrected by the hasty pen of one Nero tol Scaeva. I endeavored to serve as I could, although I often found myself in the way of the impossibly bright minds bearing Ironworks' legacy. I knew nothing of surviving this wasteland, and little on the minutia of time travel. But I did what I could, often turning to the comfort of Count Fortemps' journal for refuge in the face of such terrible destruction. 

A moon before Alexander finished renovation, the remaining, belligerently exhausted few of Garlond Ironworks and I had a final meeting; we had spent so long dealing with possibilities, chances and probabilities, that the promise of a dream made manifest seemed too true, too _kind_ a thing for take to bestow upon us, but our time—their time—was limited, and there was one final matter.

Me.

It was explained to me, painstakingly, meticulously, edging around the details so to spare me my existential horror, that as I ripped time asunder to rewrite history, the consequences of such upheaval were completely unpredictable and likely manifold beyond any measure. But of one thing they were certain. By traveling backwards in time and summoning The Warrior of Light, I would be at the critical juncture of a paradox.

The solution to such a predicament went unsaid, for its obviousness stared me full in the face with a deadly smile. 

I could not— _would_ not—survive. Either time itself would balance the scales and obliterate my existence in the process, or I would stay in the First indefinitely. Furthermore, the preservation of the Warrior’s life was of paramount importance, and I could not hesitate in aiding their battle, no matter the price, for there was no cost too high to pay for her life.

When the Dossal Gate closed behind me once more, anxiety death-gripped me like a couerl’s iron lockjaws, my hands trembling as I donned the robes that would become The Exarch's regalia, the Allagan staff falling from my hands two, three times before the weight found a home in my palms. We had done as much as we could and more, and we merely delayed the inevitable with more tedious preparation. Either the Tower made the leap, or all was lost. But Garlond Ironwork’s bright-eyed proud faces told me it was possible—more, it was _likely_ to succeed. It was the most precious gift they had to freely give, the rarest commodity in all of their doomed land—

—hope.

Imagine my surprise, when I erred by the slender margin of a hundred years.

It took a decade to come to grips with that mistake, to assure myself it was _not_ a mistake, but it was instead the single greatest advantage Althyk himself could have graced me with.

 _Time_. Far too much time, but enough time for missteps aplenty, to do what was thought an impossible task and create a fortress not even the Light itself could penetrate. The power to change, to _save_ lives. If only I had the fortitude, the knowledge, the _patience_ to weather the years and use each day to my fullest advantage.

Lashing my existence to the Tower was a small price to pay compared to all that had been lost, or _could_ be lost.

Much as time became an elastic thing in the Eighth Umbral Era, so too did my time in the First. Truthfully, I did not give much consideration to the passage of suns (if they could even be called such) until your seventh name day. You were a concrete, brilliant thing in the face of everything I had ever known, a grounding rod unlike any other. The Tower yearned to take me back to the stars and never let me go, but how could I consider such banal celestial matters when you were worried about your arithmetic examination? You altered time itself for me, slowed it down to a halt as you grew ilm by ilm, overtaking me as quickly as the wisteria slumbering in the bowels of the Crystarium.

Like any grandparent, it was a bittersweet matter when you grew independent of my caretaking. How happy I was, to know you would survive—nay— _thrive_ in the clamorous existence of the First. My sorrow was purely a selfish matter, but quickly diminished with the preparations necessary for my first summoning attempt.

Much like my initial error, each successive failure threatened to tear me asunder with my own fury— yet such mistakes transformed into my greatest asset, most of all Urianger Augurelt. I took the greatest risk of all telling him my tale, exposing all that I was and worked towards, but in my truthtelling I found a fellow conspirator in my madness.

And so, we conspired my death.

Adrenaline alone kept my voice steady when the kind souls of Garlond Ironworks told me of my fate, but the century of tempering was a balm to any fears I may have had when we charted our plans together. We planned for every possible circumstance in those stolen hours, to such excruciating detail I oft lost myself in the margins. From two dozen such plans we narrowed to half a dozen, and one of those was the safest, most assured plan of action. The greatest chance of success. A veritable avatar of hope, bearing the promise of night and salvation.

I would lie—what was a handful more on top of my _thousands?_ —to the Warrior, and keep her as wholly in the dark to my subterfuge as possible. She was not known for questioning orders, a detail Urianger told me with a saddened smile, and his prophecy would give credibility where there was none. She would take the brunt of the Light, her very soul fracturing under such catastrophic stress, and in the eleventh hour, I would take it upon myself and channel the Tower’s phantasmal energies to travel into the Rift.

And there, I would most assuredly die.

It is a credit to Urianger’s determination that he did not dissuade me from such a task. He played his part far better than I, despite my years of experience. It mattered little where she was concerned, as I'm sure even you could tell. From the moment I— _finally_ , godsdammit—summoned the Warrior, I yearned to tell her _everything._ If her lips did not question my direction, her eyes certainly did, and I severely underestimated the power of my own emotions, forestalled and contained though they may have been.

I need not recall to you the days to follow, for you yourself have born witness to her heroism, to the night sky once more. If you have any doubts on what I will do, remember how it felt when you first tipped your head back to consider what had only been once myth made reality, a velvet sky ablaze with stars. _That_ is what I strive to preserve, with all my being. 

I travel to Kholusia tomorrow. The Warrior will slaughter the final Lightwarden, and I will not return. It was not part of any of my plans or machinations to tell you such things, Lyna, but while I have hidden much and more from you, you know one thing as well as I—I am a sentimental old man. I cannot help but chart the genealogies of the Allagans, myriad and serpentine though they may be, all the way down the line to the blunted end of mine. I will not ask you to bear the burden of this blood or the Tower—it is a weight far too heavy for one whom fate has already decreed such a heavy burden. Perhaps the burden of my account will be an easier one.

Thank you, for fighting for this world, for believing in the dream of the Crystarium. I count myself blessed to have had you in my life.

* * *

His desk is as orderly as he left it, with the same preparations one would make when walking into a suicide. Each quill is neatly stacked, the inkwell fastidiously cleaned, every paper put into meticulous and perfect order. It is in complete opposition to the usual status of his desk. The letter is sealed neatly with scarlet wax, and were it not the only object on the desk, it would have seemed completely ordinary and banal, simply another missive in the hundreds of thousands he'd penned. Captain Lyna's name is written in his flowing script across the front, unremarkable save for the tear stain bleeding the ink into obscurity across the _a._

G’raha Tia tears the letter to shreds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i listened to placebo's ["running up that hill"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-mYX0qKkB8) like a goddamn psychopath the entire two hours i wrote this  
> i had a ruff day & took it out on ao3 & our favorite crystal catboy i guess


	9. lush.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated E for: Sex pollen, and the dubious consent that comes with having sex while inebriated. Depiction of drug use which may or may not strongly resemble Grade 3 Skybuilder’s Hemp.**  
>  It's a wolgraha sex pollen fic with gratuitous oral what else can i say

**lush** | _adjective_

\ ˈ _ləsh_ \

growing vigorously with luxuriant foliage

Something savory, delicious, opulent

* * *

When she presses her lips to his skin, feather soft and impossibly warm, G’raha Tia feels not a little like prey.

He should have known better when the Warrior stole into his quarters with a satchet of fae leaf and a smile. “Feo Ul gave me a gift,” she told him, “it’s meant to help one relax, but, truthfully I am afraid to try this alone.”

The herb, while fragrant, seemed innocuous enough, and he haplessly agreed. The Rising Stones was empty for all save them; the Scions had gone their separate ways to handle their neglected personal affairs, and the usual recruits which haunted the halls were asleep or too deep in their cups to notice the Warrior stealing into his quarters past midnight.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps into his neck; when in the seven hells had they gotten into his bed? He had wholly lost track of all sense of time. She’s straddling him, a light, warm thing in his lap, tracing his tattoos with tongue and lip and he shudders as if stung beneath her touch. He thinks he’s burning alive; he knows for certain he's on fire when she bites into the tender flesh at his pulse, and he bucks up into her muttering his embarrassment and then she _sucks_ and he loses all sense of reality.

“You taste wonderful,” she giggles, “I find I quite can’t help myself. Gods, have you always smelled so… _delicious?_ ”

He has no answers for her, rendered wordless, shuddering mess beneath her; her path takes her upwards, soft, pliant kisses up the column of his neck to the curve of his jaw and he can’t stifle the whimper in his throat when she sweeps her hand across his chest, claiming territory, staking her claim. 

“Did you want me, in the First?” Time hazes and coalesces; she’s moved upward, panting into his ear, and it is _far_ too easy to reach up and palm the heavy weight of her breast, and easier still to hook his finger into her bralette and push it down, exposing the pliant flesh which had tempted him for at least a century. 

“I wanted you from the start,” he tells her, because it’s nothing but the truth. Her nipples are dusky and pert, and if he had any semblance of sanity left he might have chastised himself for his brashness, but she wiggles down further into his lap, and he cannot help but crush her breast into his mouth. She mewls, wrapping around him and carding her fingers through his hair.

“I would have let you fuck me, Raha,” she gasps, “even before I knew who you were.”

“ _Gods,_ don’t tell me that,” he groans. She tastes like magic under his tongue, the curious texture of soft and hard a mesmerizing thing, and he worries her teat with his tongue. She cries out; slides a hand between them to stroke the painful hardness tenting in his breeches and he nearly loses all control then.

“What were we waiting for?” She sighs, “what in the world could have mattered so much?”

“I don’t know,” he chuckles, all sense of duty and obligation rendered asunder in his mind, narrowed only to the path he carves out with his mouth to her other breast, “but _gods_ do I want you now, I don’t think I…”

He hadn’t found anything remarkable in his words, for they seemed all too obvious to him, but it unlocked something in her, gave her a permission he hadn’t known was required, because she cradles his head in her hands and crushes her lips to his.

He hadn’t known kissing could feel like this; competitive, furious, _devouring._ She drags the swell of his bottom lip between her teeth and the universe spirals. Her taste, bittered by the fae leaf smoke, explodes on his tongue and renders him nothing but a helpless addict.

“Can I—?”

“Mm?”

“I want you,” he stammers, his body moving faster than his mind, rolling her over into the tumbled sheets, “all of you, I want to… _taste…_ ”

She shudders, arching her breasts into his bare skin when he sucks on her tongue. “Please,” she pants, “please…”

There’s too much of her and he doesn’t have enough hands or mouths to take all of her in. There has _always_ been too much of her in his mind, no one had ever, _would_ ever taken up so much space in his existence. He delights in all her varying contrasts; the hard edges of her collarbones and ribs, the rare, priceless softness of her belly, and the seamless dip down to her apex. He pushes her thighs apart, marveling at how easily she _lets_ him, lifting her hips to let him drag her dampened smalls down her smooth legs.

She makes a mess of him; she is _so_ wet, the musk of her slick an addictive, heady thing as he laps at her. Soft as Azeym roses, more lush than the ripest of apricots, his senses are harried down to only her, her, _her._ How she tries to muffle her cries with her hands, how she writhes when he worries at her swollen pearl with his tongue, the utterly devastating way her muscles squeeze around his knuckles when he slides two digits into her.

When she comes apart beneath his tongue it’s like watching a nebula unfold, burst, and begin again, and he thinks he understands what tempering might feel like. 

“You deserve this,” he whispers, his fingers parting her folds even as he comes up to kiss her, “deserve to be coming like this, whenever you want, all the time.”

She has no words for him, but he doesn’t need them; she says everything in the way she pants into his mouth, chasing the taste of herself on his tongue. She keens when he thumbs at her clit again, clawing at him for purchase, and it is purest mischief that drives him to slide three fingers into her and hook upwards, testing, finding—

“There,” she starts, almost panicked, “oh, _gods_ Raha, right there—!” Her hand slips between them, shoves down into his breeches, encircling his painfully erect cock and _strokes._ His pace falters, a growl driven out him at her touch; her keen of betrayal drives him forward again, seeking to make reprimands as he slants his mouth over hers again, his hand working on her creating sloppy, slick, _obscene_ sounds between them. 

She rips the midnight silence wide open with her scream, struggling to stifle it into his shoulder. As he thrusts desperately into her hand, his orgasm blinds him; whites him out, erases him, strips him to nothing and starts all over again, and he bites down _hard_ into her shoulder to attempt to ground himself, tears at the edges of him as he comes down from what felt like salvation itself. 

“Raha,” she whimpers, covering her face with her hands, her chest heaving. " _Gods,_ Raha..."

“Mm?” He licks his lips; he’d drawn blood, and desire overrides revulsion when her blood tastes sweet as sin on his tongue.

Her belly is covered in the long, ropey strands of his come; her eyes burn into him like hellfire as she runs a finger through the mess and brings it to her lips. It is religious in its obscenity, and he can already feel himself growing hard again for her. 

“Can you make me come again?” She asks innocently, her grin devilish and lovely.

“I think there was something in that fae leaf,” he blurts instead. "I don't want... if I'm taking advantage..." 

“Even so,” she shrugs, tracing his swollen lips with her finger, “you need have only asked.”

He determines to make up for his prior cowardice between her legs for the rest of eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> something something good shite 👌🏻


	10. avail.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated T for: Grandpa on grandpa violence. Non-sexual choking.**  
>  A scene in-between; how Emet-Selch might interrogate the Exarch.  
> Emet-Selch & Exarch, discussed WoL/Exarch and WoL/Emet. Implied Emet/Exarch if that's your thing

**avail** | _verb_

\ _ə-ˈvāl_ \

to be of use or advantage; to serve

produce or result in a benefit

* * *

Lucidity comes at a high price; every breath the Exarch takes is splintered glass in his lungs, the taste of his own blood a violent aromatic in his dry, barren mouth. Vision soon follows, and a fever dream of gildeddetailing and vast marble floors swims before him, the trimmings a dense midnight velvet that pulses in time with his ragged pulse.

“Help,” he croaks, to no one, to _anyone._ His arms are bound behind his back, the strain in his shoulders only magnifying that horrendous, sickening pain in his chest. He struggles to shift into a position to alleviate his pain even an ilm, every inhale magnifying it tenfold. 

_Her. Vauthry falling. The gunshot._

A flood of panic takes him; he wrenches against the binds, the vision of her bowed by the eruption of Light within her the only thing he can see. They were out of time _then_ , and gods knew how long he’d been unconscious.

“Help!” He calls, louder, this time with a semblance of conviction. His voice is broken gravel, grated to hoarseness.

“I’d hoped for something more interesting from you of all people, Exarch,” a sardonic drone comes from his right; his ear swivels unbidden to track its course. “Are you really just going to sit there while she slaughters this world? After all you’ve gone through to save this pointless sandbox, the First’s demise is so… _banal_.”

Emet-Selch drags a careless hand across his shoulders, slinking forward into his vision. He once thought Emet-Selch's characteristic slouch was one of reckless depression, one only felt by someone who had truly seen everything existence could offer and found nothing of worth. But it reminds him now of the low slunk he saw in the most lethal of lions he once hunted in the Ul’dah plains.

“Emet-Selch,” he grits out, “thank you so much for having me as your guest.” He struggles against the pain blooming in his chest to keep his voice light, airy, condescending. “I must say, it quite suits you.”

“One of my own designs,” he demurs, “replicated with unwavering perfection down to the smallest ilm. Tell me, could your fangled Tower achieve such a feat?”

“I must admit, I never considered utilizing such a limitless reservoir of power for… _interior design._ ”

“A pity. Perhaps your time would have been utilized better.” Emet-Selch swirls a crystal wineglass with a careful rock of his wrist, the scarlet liquid lapping the rim, but not a drop spilling. “Can I whet your appetite with this cabernet sauvignon? It’s one of my favorites, and an _excellent_ vintage besides.”

His insides roil with nausea at the mere notion. “I’m no sommelier, but I would be honored,” he forces a smile, the motion aching his smashed nose.

Emet pinches his chin between forefinger and thumb with deceptive delicacy, his soulless eyes glimmering as he tips the wineglass to his lips, enough for a swallow. The Exarch swishes it in his mouth, as he had seen countless Eulmore representatives do.

And then he spits in Emet-Selch’s self-assured face.

The Ascian scowls his disgust, dropping the wineglass with a shatter and moving into his peripheral, mopping at his face with a white napkin. “It wasn’t poisoned, you impertinent _git_.”

“What have you done with her?” The snarl rips out of him, any facsimile of politeness rendered asunder. 

“At the base of the volcano Vylbrand, only one variety of fruit will tolerate such arid conditions—the Lowland grape. Before an eruption, the Amalj’aa will harvest the fruit closest to the cooling magma as an offering to their beloved Ifrit.”

“She will die and kill us all while you prattle on about wine,” he growls. “Have you no empathy—?”

Emet-Selch rips off his pristine glove with his teeth and dashes the back of his hand across the Exarch’s face. The crack rings in his ears. 

“You _dare_ speak of empathy? It was not _I_ that goaded her into this godsdamned quest,” his voice is measured, calculated, “it was _you._ You who tricked her and her friends into slaughtering Lightwardens, you who put her life at _immense_ risk, thinking so highly of all your well-thought out plans, not anticipating anyone might undo what you wrought with something so simple as a bullet to the back.”

“I was to pay for my lies with my life, and it was still not a cost high enough to repair what I’ve done—”

“You know nothing of her,” Emet-Selch seethes, “nothing of substance, nothing that matters. Only your fairy tales of her deeds to warm you in the night.”

The chilly anger in his timbre gives the Exarch pause, it was an angle he hadn’t considered: Emet-Selch, an Ascian, might care for the Warrior in some regard. He hadn’t missed their quiet conversations, her shy smile as he indulged her myriad questions with wit and good grace. Had there been something more...?

“What is she, to you?” He asks instead, carefully. 

Not careful enough. The question earns him another backhand, this time with a closed fist. His vision swims with scarlet; a molar rolls in his mouth like a broken stone. He spits it onto the floor, the bloodied tooth marring the pristine marble at his feet.

“I consider her nothing but a pretty trinket, from one I used to hold dear,” Emet-Selch says airily, dominance once more established. “A small thing I would sacrifice without a second thought for the sake of the _actual_ one.”

“You and I have _very_ different ideas of what it means to care for her.” Blood spills from his mouth as he speaks, alkaline and metallic. 

“You cannot comprehend what she once was,” and the sorrow in his voice is ageless, and he tugs off his second glove finger-by-finger as he speaks. “If you find her captivating now, falling over yourself like a lovesick puppy for her attentions, it is the smallest fraction compared to what she was. What she could be again— _will_ be again. But I did not come here to reminisce on my past—I’m _so_ much more interested in yours, Lord Exarch.” He moves faster than levin for his throat. The crystal might have partially shielded his neck, but Emet-Selch applies _crushing_ pressure to his windpipe. He chokes, splutters violently red blood; the world threatens to spiral into darkness once more. “I know _where_ you came from; but _when?”_

Consciousness threatens to leave him wholly again; his body reacts automatically, his arms fighting to no avail against the rope binding him, wanting only to wrap his hands around his wrists and pry him off, but all he can do is gag and fight for air. A dizziness overtakes him, as if floating; at that instant, Emet-Selch releases him, and he heaves like a drowned man for the precious commodity of air.

“If you think,” he wheezes, “what you could do to me would be comparable to what I have already suffered, what I have _done_ , what I have seen wrought by the Flood…”

And Emet-Selch smiles. It is not a smile of a man; it is the snarl of a monster contained within the frail walls of Spoken flesh, the menace licking at every seam and threatening to burst forth. 

“Ah, but we have only just begun, _G'raha Tia._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i thought i would make myself sad & then i found myself a confused shipper-on-deck for grandpa on grandpa. fuck this dynamic is good.


	11. ultracrepidarian.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated T for: Alcohol and feels.**  
>  You share a glass of wine with the Exarch.  
> or: op is weak for hooded exarch and it's ao3's problem.  
> WoL/Exarch.

**ultracrepidarian** | _adjective_

\ _əltrəkrepəˈderēən_ \

expressing opinions on matters

outside the scope of

one’s own knowledge

* * *

The sky is a yawning void of pitch black, even the moon taking her rest. You wish it would swallow you up. Finish the job. Perhaps it could catch you before that primordial light, blooming, _festering_ in all the broken edges of your soul could explode out of you.

Sleep is a rare, fleeting thing, trickier than charting the path of a comet. Darkness may have swept over Lakeland, but behind your closed eyes refulgent light blazed unhindered. At every frayed edge the Scions met their demise, one by one, at your clawed, feathered, albino hands, stained sanguine and sordid.

Better to avoid such things.

“Warrior.” You tilt your head up to meet the Exarch’s beguiling smile. The dim lamplight of the Catenaries’ glows behind him, effervescent and golden. “A late night, or early morning?”

“I should ask the same of you.”

“I haven’t needed to sleep for about a moon,” he says casually, as if going suns without sleep were as normal as skipping breakfast. He plucks the wine bottle from your fist, examining the ornate label with a careful, crystal finger.

_How would that hand feel, running down your bare skin?_

Careful, you warn yourself, gritting your teeth against it. The Light finds a weakness, purrs its approval. Your heart burns like hellfire itself. 

“I remember this vintage. They say you can taste the soil and sun in wine, and the wine you slave over is the sweetest still.”

“Can you?”

He shakes his head, chuckling. It’s a throaty, warm sound that rattles the cage of your heart. “It would be ultracrepidarian of me to say I could. All wine tastes the same to me.” He passes it back to you, your fingers brushing in a friendly, easy way.

You cradle the bottleneck as you refill your wineglass. “Share with me.”

It’s not a question or an offer. It’s a statement. And while you never questioned your orders, the Crystal Exarch was most certainly entitled to. You wait for him to demur, to retreat to the cold safety of his Tower. Hold your breath against the impending disappointment.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he draws up a chair, the wood groaning its exhaustion, and takes a seat beside you. Too close for friends, too far away for lovers. Your shoulders brush and a thrill of fire shudders down your spine. Lights' wings beat in your ears. 

“Ah, but there is only one glass—“

You offer him yours. “Might be some Light in the backwash.” You grin, a broken, jagged gesture. His smile is slight and sad, but he takes it from you all the same. You watch as he takes a sip, feeling like you’re stealing stardust, a hint of something holy from a chapel. 

These small, untold traces of affection linger like stars behind cloud cover; blazing and unmistakable, even if concealed. A brush of fumbling hands under a table, lingering on each other’s knuckles for entirely too long. Shared meals, quiet and secretive. The shift was subtle, like the indeterminate color of the sky in the refractory between darkest night and dawn.

“Do you ever wish,” the wine proves to be grease to the rusty gears of your voice, “people would treat you normally? Not like an icon, but… a man?”

The Exarch slides the glass back to you. “Whatever do you mean?”

The Musica Universalis is still as a graveyard, nothing but the shambling of chainmail from the occasional sleep-deprived guard. It feels strange and forbidden to break the reverie with your insecurities. “No one has treated me as merely a woman in years, not since the Echo found me.”

You tilt your head back, finishing the glass. Set it back down with a huff. Wine flows like a wound from the bottleneck. He picks it up without question. “Perhaps I am simply sentimental.”

“If you are sentimental, whatever does that make me?” He laughs, a dark, quiet sound into your wineglass. “No; I quite catch your meaning, and understand your plight all too well."

“When’s the last time you shared a drink with someone, like this?”

He frowns, then something painful crosses his shadowy features, and he grits his teeth against it. “A very long time,” he admits. “You… do not find comfort with any of the Scions?"

Your laugh is as acidic and bitter as spoiled grapes. “Tell me, why would I be drinking with a man whose face is all but a mystery to me if I could warm the bed of anyone else?”

You feel keenly the light fracturing all your edges, that lazy, patient threat which yearns to rip asunder the darkened skies once more. You feel, for once, incredibly, painfully, _mortal._ Nothing but a lonely woman in a bizarre land, too strong to be protected, too frail to be held, even by those who loved you.

Your thigh brushes his beneath the table, and he makes no move away. You are greedy, taking everything he can give you. 

“I see.” His voice is husky and low. “So it wasn’t my beguiling charms after all. I fear my ego shall never recover.”

“Your charms,” you tilt your head up to his. Your knees collide together, unschooled and clumsy. His lips are parted in a pant, and his breath smells of wine and embers, “may have played a role in the matter.”

The Exarch says nothing. Instead, he raises a slow, cautious hand—the crystal one, rough-hewn and reflecting fractals—and catches a lock of hair in front of your face. He brushes it to the side, and lingers, far, _far_ too long on the curve of your cheekbone, the swell of your cheek, down the cant of your jaw to the column of your neck, ghosting over the staccato of your pulse.

Dawn threatens to burst forth, the sky traversing from depthless black to deep indigo.

“Kiss me,” you breathe.

It is as close to a command as you have ever given anyone.

The Crystarium sleeps undisturbed under the watchful gaze of the Tower. 

His hand lingering at your shoulder brings you close, and slowly, carefully, as if the smallest movement would awaken chaos once more, slants his lips over yours.

It feels as if you’ve bottled levin when his lips meet yours. Behind your closed lids, darkness unfurls, welcoming, beckoning.

You are more than content to fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one of the bonuses of this event is that i'm all too well-acquainted with my style, so i'm trying to switch it up & break up those long ass sentences & paragraphs, and take my time with my prose. i hope it was effective.  
> i listened to dan avidan's cover of ["nights in white satin"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45Rg6OZkGsM) on repeat, what a lovely song.


	12. tooth and nail.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated E for: Explicit sexual content, edging, bondage, blindfolding, hatefuck, crying from overstimulation/frustration.**  
>  He has never taken you like this.  
> WoL/Hooded!Exarch.

**tooth and nail** | _adverb_

/ _ˈtüth-ən(d)-nāl_ /

to fight with every available means

* * *

It has never been like this. Bound and blindfolded, numb and unconscionable to the world outside of those worshipful, mismatched hands raising fire down your body, leaving you savaged and ruined—always.

But it had been with something bordering adoration, apologetic and reverent, any of his harm assuaged by a kiss and honeyed, indefinitely loving words that melted all your ragged, broken edges. 

Now—your hair still smelling of the marshy, fragrant Rak’tikan greatwoods, a whispered conversation you would give _anything_ to erase lingering in your ears—

—the Exarch fucks you with a vendetta.

His fist is buried in your silken locks, shoving your face into the wooden kitchen table beneath you. You smell bruised apples, shattered wine, and your _sex_ , mind harrowed to a razor’s edge by the sheer ferocity of his ire. You can do aught but whimper, tears so near the edge, driven further with each one of his slow, _punishing_ thrusts; piercing you to the core, before beginning again, and again, pummeling you into a begging wreck for his cock. 

You wonder what you’ve done to anger him so—

—so you can do it _again._

You scream, hoarse and broken when he abruptly sheathes himself to the hilt, _crushing_ your haunches to his hips. It feels like too much, more than you could ever possibly take, but your insides clench and writhe around his girth as his hand spread your slickened sex apart, hooking around one limp leg to push it onto the table out of his way. He finds your abused, swollen node, picking up a pace so ragged you make obscene, slickened noises together. 

It is a curse and blessing; he’s had you so many times, so many ways, that he knows _exactly_ how to drive you beyond the edge of pleasure.

You gave him such precious information not knowing he would use it against you in your darkest moments.

“You cannot trust me, but there’s nothing stopping you from coming on my cock, is there?” He grates out, his voice dragged through the coals. “ _Fascinating._ ” You yelp when he gives another cruel thrust into you, the table squeaking its own protest.

During these trysts, you sometimes try to piece apart his features, fitting different edges like a puzzle, never finding quite the right one. Often you take comfort in the blindfold and it’s womb-like darkness, giving yourself over to incandescent pleasure without a second thought.

But a blinding Light from within threatens to overtake you each time you close your eyes.

You try to think of any face but the one you dread most of all, the one you were most certain was _his._

“You aren’t exactly complaining—!” It's impossible to sound regal in such straits. He shoves two fingers in your wet, begging mouth; the crystal hand, hard edges grating against your teeth.

“Suck.”

Were he anyone else, you would bristle at being ordered around so.

Instead, you shudder and obey, wrapping your tongue around the rough-hewn edges, wondering if he can feel your tongue laving him with as much attention as if it were his cock. His breath is scorching in your ears, so loud you can scarce hear your own cries. Something _shatters_ within you; you mewl around his fingers, your orgasm an inferno coiling, ready to spring, ready to rip you apart and leave nothing in it’s stead…

He pulls out of you, drops his hand from your apex, his damp, still-hard cock resting on your haunches.

You are ashamed of the raw scream of frustration that rips out of you.

“What,” you snarl, “the _fuck_ is wrong with you.”

His smug smirk bleeds into his voice. “You didn’t think this would be _easy,_ did you, o’ Warrior of Light?”

You feel horribly helpless and humiliated, insides clenching around nothingness, brought so _close_ to that scared edge of oblivion and dragged backwards screaming time and time again, as if he had all the time in the world, and you his mere plaything. Hot, embarrassed tears soak into the blindfold, your chest wracked with the effort.

His hand rests in the middle of your shoulder blades, calming, placating. “Is it too much?” He asks you with hushed gentleness. “ Never forget, your safe word is always an option.”

There was that kindness again, that patient tenderness you had grown to hold so dear, an invaluable shared secret blooming in the darkness of your quiet apartment. 

His love hurts more than his rage. Anger, you could take. Punishment, in handfuls. Love—

—sobbing though you were, the sickest part of you wished he would hate you.

“Shut up and finish me, _Exarch,_ ” you seethe, feigning a semblance of dignity. You sniffle hard against the overwhelm in your throat.

His hand crushes you into the table, blunt nails digging into your skin, before sliding down to hook his fingers into your bound wrists, heaving you upwards and into his arms. He holds you there for a long moment, as if steadying himself in your body, the swathes of crystal soothing ice against your burning skin. His chest heaves into you, his breathy panting heavy inyour ear. The arms around you are protective, loving, comforting.

“Perhaps,” he mutters, dark and filthy, “that mouth would be put to better use.”

The flagstones dig into your knees as he pushes you down.

He had never had you like this; you had offered, only to be smothered by a warm chuckle and sugary kisses. “This,” he would say in those lovestruck moments, “is for _you,_ not I.”

He hisses like he’s being burned when you open your lips for him, his swollen, slick head resting on your tongue as you stretch your jaw to take all of him. If it were any other day, perhaps he would have taken his time, guarded by patience and adoration; but he shoves into your waiting mouth with an unhinged growl. He tugs hard enough on your bunched hair to sting. Your tongue works, furious and desperate, against his slow, tempered thrusting.

“ _Gods,”_ he rasps, pained. You taste nothing but _yourself_ on him, aromatic and musky. You want all of it, all of _him._ “Has anyone ever had the Warrior of Light, begging on her knees, like this?” He slides out of your panting mouth, the grip on your hair growing insistent. “Answer.”

“Never,” you whimper. It is the truth.

 _“Good.”_ He kneels down and to your great shock, kisses you with a fury, cradling your head in his hand with the care and devotion you had grown to adore him for. You can do aught but reciprocate, panting and open-mouthed, leaning into the steady, unyielding weight of his body. The kiss turns brutal once more, and he bites your bottom lip so hard you yelp; when he pulls away, coppery blood blooms on your tongue.

He reaches behind you, undoing your bindings with assured, smooth movements. Your shoulders sigh with relief, grateful for the alleviated tension.

“A-Are you done with me—?”

“Heavens, no.” The Exarch shoves you onto back onto the bed; you stumble, falling in a disconcerted heap. Your chest rises and falls with fear and, worst of all, _desire._ “Your torment is _far_ from over.”

He lashes together your wrists again, this time to the steel bed frame, the tightly wound muscle of his body ghosting over yours a torment all its own. He lazily slides his tongue in your mouth, possessive and harsh and leaving you keening before moving to your neck. He laps at the junction between your chin and jaw, your pulse _leaping_ in response…

...and godsdamn him, he _bites._

You gasp your indignation. “St-Stop, they’re going to see…!” It is a plaintive, begging mewl, and you flush to hear your own voice. 

He chuckles into your skin, sucking a punishing bruise into that vulnerable skin, so easily bruised. “And what will you say, when they ask?” He taunts. “How will you explain away my _mark_ on you, I wonder? The bags under your eyes, fucked so thoroughly till you cannot even _walk.._ ”

His cock is at your slickened entrance again, the swollen head brushing against your clit.

You writhe your hips against him, wondering if you could come on this _alone._

“...I look forward to seeing you squirm under such questions on the morrow.”

There’s no hesitation when he pushes into you—you are dripping wet for him—only the smooth, effortless glide and your answering cries. “By the Twelve, _yes,_ ” you sob when he thumbs at your node, dragging slow, torturous circles in time with his thrusts. Perhaps he'd finally found you worthy of relief, all your begging and tears come to fruition. 

You have never reached your peak so fast; you are breathless with the merciless way it grips you. Your climax waits in the wings, a wildfire ready to destroy, yearning to burn bright and _alive._ And the second it begins, your back arching with for the awaiting nirvana…

He slides out of you as you shriek your protest, saying your name like a profane, cursed thing. His spend falls on your heaving stomach in hot, ropey strings, pooling into the hollow of your belly. 

“I,” he pants, somehow managing to sound smug even after orgasm, “don’t know if you’ve earned your release yet.”

You yearn to fight tooth and nail against your restraints and spit in his face.

You are rendered a begging, ravaged mess instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have no excuses, just a half-empty bottle of moscato and [three days grace](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud4HuAzHEUc) on repeat.


	13. benediction.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated M for: Injury, blood, minor violence, hurt/comfort.**  
>  You are in dire straits after Vauthry's attack.  
> WoL/Hooded!Exarch.

**benediction** | _noun_

\ˌ _be-nə-_ ˈ _dik-shən_ \ 

something which promotes goodness, well-being 

an expression of good wishes

the invocation of a blessing

* * *

You don’t remember stumbling into your room; the distance from the Exarch Gate to the Pendants is a hazy, adrenalized blur, slipping onyour sodden boots, caked with mud and dried blood. Peeling off your armor is a hopeless task; you compromise attempting to pour yourself a glass of water, your hand trembling so violently more slops onto the floor than into the cup. 

And that is when the floor comes up to greet you, everything fading into blessed velvet oblivion.

Soldiers meet their end, one by one, to albino abominations behind your eyes, spilt blood black under the moonlight.

_I’m fine!_ Lyna’s ragged, defiant scream.

_What have I done to deserve this mercy?_

Ardbert’s broken cry drags you further down into the depths. 

You daze there on the floor for what feels an impossible time, the flagstones cool and comforting beneath your dirty cheek. 

“Warrior? Are you alright?” 

_The Exarch._

All at once, reality orbits, then centers. _How long have I…?_

Surely he was far too busy to notice your absence. It is still dark outside, the rain unrelenting and deafening beyond your cracked window. 

“Sorry,” you try wheeze, licking your cracked lips. “I…”

Merely speaking sends you into a spiral again, and consciousness slips to the periphery. 

The door opens; there is a flurry of movement before strong, mismatched arms come hard around you, pulling you up and into an embrace.

You stare up, dazed and overwhelmed, at the Exarch’s frowning face. 

“What happened?” he whispers, placing a hand to your forehead. His hand is cool as river water against your skin, and you shudder at his touch. 

“…my… back…” The fractured sob rips out of you. 

He urges you into a sitting position, rearranging your numb, unresponsive limbs before kneeling behind you. He hisses at what he sees; you can barely feel it at this point, but you would not soon forget the agony of that Sin Eater’s sword arcing your back, nearly splitting you to the bone. 

“We have to get you to Sparygetics, “ he tells you sternly. “The chirugeons—“

“—are far too overwhelmed,” you croak, “to deal with someone who is not at death’s door.” 

His hands still on your back, gentle and contemplative. He knows the capacities of his city far better than you do, and you had seen the bloodshed and gore in Spagyrics. You had suffered worse in direr straits; you would not die tonight.

“Regardless,” he mutters in a tone that brokers no argument,“pray let me heal this, and get you into dry clothes.” 

You nod fervently, eager to be dry and warm. 

There on the floor, the Exarch fumbles with the myriad latches of your greaves, before finally slipping them off and setting them to the side. He peels off your rainsoaked socks, lingering on your chilled feet to rub some semblance of warmth into them. Your chestpiece is easier to remove, but made difficult by the sheared armor, metal fragments imbedded into that grievous wound across your back. You are stiff and useless in his hands, barely able to even raise your arms to help him slide off the breastplate. When you are left in your underclothes, he hesitates, resting his hands on your knees. 

“I-I can send for one of Scions, if you would be more comfortable—“ 

You grip his crystal hand in both of your trembling, bloodsoaked ones. “Let them rest,” you plead. “Please—do this for me.” 

He sets his mouth in a firm line, and sets to work. 

It is a testament to your condition that you lack the capacity to care when he shirks your leggings and smalls with slow, cautious hands, his head tilted pointedly away from the junction between your legs. He strips off your dripping tunic and bralette from the back, being careful not to brush against the angry, ragged slice bisecting the flesh. You can do aught but shiver when he scoops you easily into his arms, the warmth of his robes feeling strange against your chilled, naked skin. He sets you gently on the bed, draping your quilt over your front and arranging it so you are both covered and comfortable, before turning his attentions to your back. 

“You are,” he breathes, “very, _very_ lucky, my Warrior.” 

“When am I not?” you huff

“This could have paralyzed you,” he tells you. “And you are lucky that I have the Tower to aid me in this endeavor.” 

The aether floods your veins with glacial water and chases it with fire. He whispers benedictions unknown under his breath, even the Echo unwilling to translate such verses. 

Eventually the aether ebbs out of you, and he runs his crystal hand down your back. You flinch instinctively, then relax, surprised by the lack of pain. You twist your hand around to feel it; in the cut’s place is a raised, angry scar, the skin pulled taught at the edges. It would join the myriad scars scattered across your body—but—you would live.

“Thank you,” you whisper.

“Your back is still caked in blood,” he sighs. “Let me wipe it off for you.” 

You doze, contented and _blessedly_ warm, in your bed as he leaves you once more. You drift in and out of the feverish haze of sleep, before the Exarch stirs you to press a steaming mug of tea into your hands. He sponges off the dried blood, patient and slow, fingers lingering on your skin in a way not quite parental, not quite amorous, but you want to _weep_ with the tenderness suffused in his actions. 

_I’m more gone than I thought,_ you think to yourself as he eases you into a fetal position. 

“I’ll send Alisaie in the morning,” he murmurs as he tucks you into the blankets. “But for now, rest as long as you need. The horrors can wait til the morning.” 

He moves to pull away; you clutch at his hand desperately, the hasty grabbing of a frightened child.

It embarrasses you far more than him seeing you naked, and you cannot begin to help yourself. 

“Stay with me,” you plead. “Just til I fall asleep. I can’t…” you shake your head, so far beyond exhaustion even for tears. “It is hard—to sleep, anymore.” 

He nods immediately. “Of course. It is the least I can do.” 

He moves about the apartment, hushing candles and neatening your things, before he comes back to your side in the darkness, sitting down at the bedside. Your hand finds his again, that comforting embrace of something whole, something sturdy, something _human_.

He is quiet for a while, only the gentle rise and fall of his breath, the ragged gasping of yours, and the rainfall bleeding it together. As you drift into unconsciousness, praying for nothing but dreamless sleep, you swear you hear a familiar song under his hushed breath. 

_“Feel the wind eternal…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if this isn't my usual, it was hard to get out haha. ffxivwrite doesn't pair well with school.  
> the exarch is singing [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuE1vlACANA), which makes me teary every time i hear it. i can't believe it exists.


	14. part.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated T for: implied sexual content, angst.**  
>  four times he doesn't tell her, and one time he does.  
> WoL/G'raha.

**part** | _noun_

\  ˈ _pärt_ \

an essential portion or integral element

one constituent of a divided whole

one’s allotted action or duty 

* * *

i.

He knows it an impossible feat, but gravity itself centers around her. Her razor sharp smile, the cold kindness glinting in her eyes, the way she cleaves her enemies, flesh parting like silk—the constellations of her galaxy.

He has fallen in love with her and she is a touch of holiness so far above such earthly matters. 

There is satisfaction in loving without hope of reciprocation. Picking open a scab, clenching down on a rotten tooth, nudging a faded bruise. Only to ensure the pain is still there, furious and _alive._

“There’s only one tankard left,” she smiles. The smoldering fire renders her resplendent. Their compatriots settle down into well-deserved slumber, for tomorrow they would seize the Tower, as much as such a thing might be tamed. “Would you like to share?”

“I’d be happy to,” comes his stammer. Boyish. Immature. He thinks of a million ways to rephrase this for fifty years. 

She takes a long drought with the flourish of a pirate before passing it to him. Their fingers brush; levin leaps under his skin at the touch of her bare skin on his. 

_I love you, even if you are far, far too good for me. Because you are too good._

He drinks deep in holy communion with her. He tastes a touch of stardust on his tongue.

ii.

It is different than when he knew her under strange purpled skies and lands fractured by crystal. Then, she had concealed her disinterest with kindness, but now—

—she stares down his shadowed features with scarce concealed hatred.

She strides out ahead of him, eyes set unwaveringly on Holminster Switch. Undaunted, bravery bordering on reckless. He shivers as he watches the arc of her greatsword cleave abomination and horrors alike; with desire or fear, he knows not. 

Much as he was no longer the man she knew in Syrcus, she is no longer the woman he once knew. 

The Warrior slays Phillia as if she was born to it.

He expected nothing less of her, yet it leaves him breathless all the same. It is an impossible feat rendered physical, once more by her hand. 

Hydaelyn’s blessing holds true—she takes on the light, pierces the heavens themselves. Splits a maw of pure velvet sky before them. 

Lyna stares and _stares_ upward, violet eyes glimmering with unshed tears. 

“How I have waited,” he breathes, reverent, hushed. 

It feels only natural to fall to his knees before her, to supplicate in her presence. 

_How could I ever love anyone else?_

The hatred in her eyes lessens a centime. 

iii.

He hadn’t expected his last day alive to be so pleasant. 

It is as if Althyk himself has granted him an indulgence. To fight alongside her, one last time. She laughs, free and open at Korutt’s words, and he has never felt so young. Strength explodes like fire out of him, wild, unbridled. But—

—there is always a price to pay. When he returns to Wright he is a defeated husk of himself, stumbling to the sanctuary of the seaside cliff-face. He hadn’t slept since she’d arrived—he tells himself it’s because his duties are too numerous, but it’s because he doesn’t want to waste so much as a second—and exhaustion pulls him under, unrelenting, vengeful. 

He wakes to her gentle voice, a sound sweeter than any song, the concern in her eyes sweeter still. 

He has never felt so vulnerable, so keenly aware of his mortality. And so, he cannot resist; he spins her a final tale of a woman, his _inspiration_ , and of those incandescent dreams swept by an eternal wind, knowing full well they will never come to pass.

_It is you—gods—it has only ever been you._

The Tower keens like a scorned lover in the thrum of blood in his veins, sensing the last line of the Allagans coming to an end.

iv.

_Tell her,_ his better sense roars to him, clawing against the jagged ice sliding up his chest, his arms, threatening to swallow him whole, promising a swift end. _Tell her, godsdamnit all. Before it’s too late._

“If I were to tell you that this isn’t the end—that we will meet again—would you believe me?” he says instead.His timbre cracks on the last syllable, plaintive. She cradles his hands in hale, warm ones, his locked in the rigor mortis of the Tower’s embrace. 

She does not hesitate. She nods fervently, her grip growing tighter on him, as if she could keep him here. Inexorably she presses the alabaster crystal into his hands, his blood glimmering brighter than rubies. 

He doesn’t tell her. He walks tall and proud, makes his final resting place one of respect, one worthy of the Crystarium.

After all—

—this was not the end.

v.

He wakes to her arms around him hard enough to crush, her tears hot and lovely against his cheek. He hugs her with arms unused, nubile and numb. She peppers his face with a thousand holy kisses, cursing him, thanking him, before slanting her lips over his. 

She truly tastes of stardust, an impossible, heady thing. 

G’raha Tia limps out of the Crystal Tower for the final time. 

The following days are a blessed, dazed blur and he feels as if he is crying all the time, each new joy gripping his heart hard enough to burst. Each morning he wakes, shocked and laughing that he is still _here_ , not slumped over a book in the Ocular.

And _she_ …

She’s magnetized to him, unwilling to leave his side. Tugs him to her chambers that first night with a devilish grin, pins him to the sheets like her next conquest. There is fire in each of her kisses, embers dragging down, down, _down_ his bare skin.

He is willing to burn for her. She sets him ablaze and leaves nothing in the wake of her ardor.

He doesn’t tell her then, or after. He bides his time, a commodity he has never before appreciated, falling into the motions of humanity once more. She takes him on a tour of Eorzea, reminding him of all the niceties of homeland, pointing out what has changed, what has remained.

They doze, indolent and lovedrunk, on the white sands of Costa de Sol. He is sunburnt and saltkissed, fireworks rocketing overhead with shrieks and howls. 

He tells her then, punctuates it with a clumsy kiss. 

She touches his face as if _he_ is a sacred, valued thing, tugging him down to her. 

It sounds far better than he could have imagined coming from her lips. 


	15. ache.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated M for: depictions of casual sexism, alcohol, and sexual content.**  
>  AU in which the Exarch and Alphinaud use a dancer!WoL to sneak into Eulmore. She goes above and beyond in her duty.  
> WoL/Exarch.

**ache** | _noun_

/ ˈ _āk_ /

to suffer a dull, persistent pain 

to become distressed, disturbed

to experience painful yearning

to feel compassion

* * *

“This is, far and away, Alphinaud, the _worst_ idea you’ve ever had.” 

“I understand your reticence, Warrior. Regrettable though it may be, Alphinaud understands the priorities of the Eulmoran elite, and Vauthry especially, all too well. You will be a prize too valuable to turn away.” 

“But was _this…”_ You gesture to your garb, a scarlet halter top leaving much of your breasts exposed not to mention your _entire_ midriff, the triangle of fabric comprising your smalls flimsier still, “ _really_ necessary?” 

“Forgive my saying so, Warrior, but you truly look the part. You are the only one of any of us who is an accomplished dancer—and they will allow a jackal in their midst for the sake of beauty.” Alphinaud smiles reassuringly as he lifts the mask onto your face. It is a gilded, horned representation of a unicorn, and while your vision is limited, it conceals your features entirely. Should matters come to blows, you would be able to slip out, unawares. 

“Alphinaud shall pose as my understudy, and they will not refuse you entrance with my presence. With any luck, such a show will distract the Eulmoran ambassador enough to let him slip the true location of the Lightwarden.” The Exarch clenches his staff, giving you a rare, teasing smile. “Try not to murder anyone, o’ _honeybee._ ” 

You give him a murderous look.

The Exarch and Alphinaud were both proven correct; the Jongleurs cannot usher the Exarch and his companions into Eulmore fast enough, and you are promptly sent before the so-called “queen” of the establishment for examination. She is a shrewd woman, and cocks her head at you before nodding. “ Your body tells the tale surely enough. You will do. You will do plenty. Heavens knows where the Exarch dug you up from, but we’re short on dancers and I am not wont to ask questions. Vauthry sent the last one into the ocean, and is asking for a fresh one.” She gestures to the stage, and then points out the Exarch, Alphinaud, and the Eulmoran diplomat, all taking their seats in front of the stage, albeit with some obvious hesitance.

“If you can get the Exarch to react, you’ll have the spot. That is all I ask.” 

Your heart leaps into your throat. Your mouth goes dry as a desert. “M-My lady, I do not think he will—“ 

“Beneath all that pomp and shadow is a red-blooded man. Besides,” and she grins wickedly, “it would entertain the Eulmoran elite to no end, and render Vauthry a jealous wreck. He will not suffer for the Exarch to have anything more beautiful, a woman most especially. Or,” she cocks a brow, “do you think you’re not up to snuff?” 

You wipe your sweaty palms on the paltry scrap of silk about your hips. You clench your fists with determination, struggling to steady your voice.“I can do aught but try, my lady.” 

* * *

The diplomat was single-minded about where he wanted his audience—the front-most table of the Beehive, with a perfect view of the center dance stage. “They make the best drinks,” he says casually, openly letting his eyes wander across the toned and oiled bodies of the various Honeybees. 

_It’s a necessary evil,_ The Exarch thinks to himself, before slinking down into the booth, Alphinaud perched between he and the diplomat. _And it’s not as if her audition will be on stage._ She had been a truly splendid vision, and were he a younger man, a _different_ man, he might have been sorely tempted. But time had tempered such appetites to but a fraction of what they once were; he was far more interested in getting to the bottom of the Lightwarden’s true location. He only hoped she might escape unmolested. 

Alphinaud urges along the conversation tactfully, taking slow, cautious sips of his own wine, the diplomat downing his cocktail quickly while the Exarch listened close, slipping in hints of information, waiting for his chance to strike. 

He opens his mouth to speak, but a hush falls over the establishment. The music shifts; the smooth piano hits a darker, stronger note. His chair is leaned away from the stage, but it seems everyone else’s eyes are magnetized to it. Alphinaud chokes on his wine. The diplomat falls silent, his mouth agape. 

“Who in the seven hells is _that?_ ” He barks. 

His heart slinks into his stomach. 

The Exarch forces himself to look up from his drink. 

She is a vision of whispering silk and sleek, oiled muscles, and masked though she was, there was no doubt it was the Warrior of Light. They had chosen well; her dance is seductive, precise, and skilled, and even the Honeybees themselves still to watch her performance. She grasps the center pole in two, slender hands, hooks a sleek leg around and lets herself fall in a slow, mesmerizing spiral, sinking to the ground in the low crouch of a predator. 

He takes a very dry swallow.

“Well, that is … _illuminating,_ ” he grates over the clamor of the guests. She had mostly _definitely_ drawn a crowd. “Now, for our deal—“ 

“Live a little, Lord Exarch! Enjoy the show!”

Alphinaud stares at the Exarch, looking as if spontaneous combustion would be a blessing at this point. “Hydaelyn save us,” he mutters before finishing the dregs of his wine.

“Hey, baby! C’mere, I’ll give you some honey— oh ho, here she comes!” crows the diplomat, his eyes growing wider and wider. 

The Exarch forces himself to stare ahead at the empty stage, focusing his attentions on the intricate tapestries. If she came to the table— _fine._ So long as it furthered the mission, he would suffer whatever torments availed him. It would only make sense that she approach the diplomat; sweetened by her attentions, he’d be more pliable, and therefore willing to let slip some information. 

A gentle hand comes to rest on his shoulder, dragging the breadth of his wingspan in a slow, torturous motion. “Are you not enjoying the show, my _lord?_ ”

The gods had truly abandoned him after all.

He forces himself to look up, from the sway of her hips to her pert breasts and finally to her face.

The masked visage of the Warrior of Light grins down at him with a knowing, scarlet smile. 

“Y-You are quite talented,” he stammers. “But I regret to say such a performance is not to… my _tastes._ ” 

She makes a low sound of disappointment in her throat. For a blessed moment, he thinks she might give up on tormenting him so. 

“Well, in that case…”

She grips the back of his chair, and in a single, graceful motion, she slides her warm weight squarely into his lap, cradling his face in her hands. 

His drink shatters to the floor as he grips her hips to steady her. 

It was too much to ask of any man, to pine for a woman for _so_ long, and then be seduced in such a way. The shocked voices fade around him as she cants his head up to his, tracing the slash of crystal across his cheek with slow, careful fingers. His breath comes in ragged pants as she cocks her masked face at him. Godsdamnit all, the _anonymity_ is the most erotic thing about it. 

She smells of spice and sex, running her thumb across the fullness of his parted lips. Even if he _wanted_ to look elsewhere, why in the seven hells would he? He quite literally held all he could ever ask for here in his lap. 

For the first time in a century, his myriad concerns and anxieties melt away to nothingness beneath her scorching, loving touch.

“What lies beyond those shadowy features, I wonder?” she whispers to him. “A charming prince? A cloaked beast? Perhaps I shall find out for myself.” She leans down, chuckling throatily as those sanguine lips parted for the kiss to come. 

He is _frozen_ in her grip, helpless as a fly to a spider. A thousand possibilities race through his mind as to _why_ she would attempt such a stunt, but none of them matter as he feels himself leaning into her touch, lips parting… 

An ilm shy of the penultimate moment, those lips curve into a devilish smile, and she brushes a scorching kiss on his cheek. _“I’m so sorry,”_ she whispers into his hood. She slides off him with an uncharacteristic giggle, before dancing lightly back to the stage to a resounding, raucous applause. They would not soon forget the woman who discomfited the untouchable Crystal Exarch. 

“It seems that even beyond all that crystal and hood, the Exarch is still a hot-blooded man!” the diplomat laughs, clapping him hard on the shoulder with approval. “You look as if you’ve seen the gods themselves!” 

“Y-Y-Yes, that was most certainly… _invigorating,_ ” he says with clenched teeth, his cheeks burning, heart racing harder than ever, the _ache_ of her radiating through every ilm of him. 

Alphinaud stares at him if he’s returned from a brutal war, pale and harrowed. The Exarch cannot bring himself to meet his gaze. “More wine, please,” Alphinaud croaks. 

Flinging himself off the Eulmoran balconies sounds a better fate than this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bet you thought i'd go full angst, huh? well, the power of thirst won out today. this was inspired by this lovely [drawing](https://twitter.com/ohhnyoo/status/1305264040453779457?s=20) by @ohhnyoo. please give them some love.


	16. lucubration.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated M for: Voice kink, mild exhibitionism without consent, sexual content, and worst of all, poetry.**  
>  His voice was a seductive thing all on its own.   
> WoL/Hooded!Exarch because the fuck else does anyone expect of this dumpster fire

**lucubration** | _noun_

/ _lü-kyə-_ ˈ _brā-shən_ /

to study laboriously

or intensively

by lamplight

* * *

You find the Exarch in the Cabinet of Curiosities, a treasure hidden amidst of the maze of tomes tucked away in an isolated alcove. His hooded head is bowed low over a massive open book, one long, crystalline finger tracing the lines as he reads. Every ilm of his body is curved around the literature, intent, his focus downright charming. You creep towards him on whisper-silent feet, balancing the teacup in your hands, before gently placing it to his right.

He starts up at the clack of the saucer on the table, shaking his head to himself at the sight of you. “Warrior,” he sighs, voice tight and hoarse, “it appears I have lost track of time—once again.” He winds a hand around his neck, craning this way and that til a quiet _pop,_ then relaxes

“The Scions were expecting you for our nightly meeting,” you remind him. “Although it has been decided such matters can wait til the morrow.”

“I apologize, for my tardiness,” he murmurs. He hooks a finger in the teacup handle, bringing it to his nose. “This smells wonderful. Thank you, my friend.”

You sink into the seat beside him, leaning over curiously to see his reading. “Allagan poetry?”

He nods, taking a sip of his tea before setting the cup down neatly in its saucer. “Yes. Well, not precisely. Truthfully I began my evening refreshing my memory on temporal mechanics with aetherial manipulation; should events go awry in Kholusia, it would not do for me to endanger us with my ignorance.”

His voice, the timbre low and warm, enchants you completely, lulling you into a daze as you listen to his gentle, well-spoken words. You struggle to find your own voice. “So I see. And how did this bring you to poetry?”

He tastes another swallow of his tea, before waving his crystal hand with a flourish. “I am but a doddering old man at even the best of times; a particular phrase caught my ear, and I could not concentrate until I figured out where it was from.”

“Uh huh. And what was the phrase?”

“ _Fortress_ —just the word, mind you.” He chuckles, a smokey, honeyed sound that causes the heat to rise with a flourish to your cheeks. “Insufferable, is it not?”

You shake your head, only wanting for him to speak more, to invoke whatever knowledge he holds with that lovely, _lovely_ voice. “Not at all. Did you find the poem?”

He nods. “Not a minute ago, actually. The Archmagus Scylla was infamous for her love of poetry, and kept excellent records on the latest artistic works of the Allagan ages. She single-handedly preserved several centuries of Allagan art-forms within the Tower, some in rooms so intricate I still haven’t drawn them out myself.”

Your chest grows tighter with each syllable he intones, a lancinating white heat stirking down the column of your spine and sizzling out at your apex. You slide your hand beneath the table and between your thighs, clenching your muscles around it for _some_ modicum of relief. Each of his words is wrapped in warm, molten sensuality, the very vibration causing your nails to dig into the taut flesh of your thigh.

 _Gods,_ you think, humiliated and desperate, _am I really so turned on just by his voice?_

“I think I met Scylla,” you say tightly.

He tips his head towards you, a smile playing on his full lips. You hated his lips most of all, hated the way they taunted you in the darkest, loneliest hours of the night. “In the Source? You shall have to regale me with this tale, my friend.”

You shake your head, swallowing thickly. Mismatched eyes, sanguine and emerald, swim before your vision. The incredible _guilt_ crashes around your ears as you speak. How dare you even _consider_ flirting with such a man when he might be hiding your friend’s demise? “P-Perhaps another time. But what of your discovery?”

“Ah.” He gestures to the page. It is tattered, an ancient rim of a misplaced coffee mug eclipsing one corner, the ragged scrawl of hasty notes on another. “I believe I have found it. Shall I read it for you?” _Godsdamn_ him, he leans in close to you, and his presence is a far headier thing than you imagined, his voice sweeter than caramel.

The hand caught between your thighs hitches higher; you press your pelvis into it, biting down on your bottom lip. The suffusion of insufferable guilt and purest carnal _attraction_ in your blood renders you light-headed. “P-Please.” It comes out as a hoarse plea.

It was a mistake.

His tongue curves around the vowels as if sweetened cream in his mouth, his luxurious timbre, rendered gravelly and harsh from exhaustion, enfolds you in its embrace, the gentle purr of his verses making breath itself a difficult thing to catch, the very lamps themselves glowing brighter with each word. You shove the heel of your hand, slowly, so not to catch his attention, into your center, hotly embarrassed by just how _wet_ you are, from _nothing_ at all, merely the song of his voice. Somehow he draws closer still to you, leaning over far, _far_ too much to allow you to read the pages as his long, slender finger follows the poetry.

It is a torment unlike any other.

You wish it to never end.

“… round which the arms had wound themselves, as if they knew love is the only fortress strong enough to trust to,” he finishes, close enough now that his breath ghosts over your hear, impossibly intimate and warmer than a winter fire. “The poet is unnamed, but they say they were inspired by the goddess Llymlaen, watcher of the seas and navigation. Gods only know why it stayed around in my mind; although perhaps there is a greater truth to be divined here, I wonder?”

“Um,” you squeak.

“Is it that pain again?” The Exarch asks suddenly, and, moving quickly, breaking all boundaries—

—he cups your chin up to his before laying his hand upon your brow. You shudder under his touch, helpless, overwhelmed, feverish and itching for him, to tug off his robes, to press him against a bookshelf, something, gods _anything._ Instinctively you reach your hand up to squeeze harmlessly around his strong wrist, lashes fluttering closed.

“I feel fine,” you force, “t-tired, perhaps.”

The Exarch drops his hand; you are ashamed to say you gasp at its loss, clenching the edges of your chair with both hands to steady yourself amongst the tide of pleasure threatening to overrun you.

“Take your rest,” he commands, in a timbre that brokers no argument. You shudder at that dark tone. “And— thank you, for the tea, and above all, your company.”

He says _company_ like it’s a profanity, like he’d whisper it into your ear as he fucked you into the bedclothes, and the temptation to plead with him _come with me, stay the night with me_ overwhelms you, leaves a tidal wave of hurt in your breast as you gaze up into his penumbral features.

“Of course,” you stammer instead, excusing yourself hastily before taking off at a dead sprint the instant you’re out of his sight.

To be alone in a strange land, your heart cleaved so many ways…

… it was a difficult thing to bear alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the poem is a real one by marianne moore, [here.](https://poets.org/poem/paper-nautilus)


	17. fade.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated T for: Alcohol, angst. Healer role quest spoilers ahead.**  
>  You both know what it’s like to love someone when you’ve never seen their face.  
> WoL & Ardbert, discussed Ardbert/Lamitt and WoL/Exarch.

**fade** | _verb_

/ _ˈfād_ /

to lose freshness, strength, vitality

to sink away

* * *

The light bleeds through the frosted windows of your quiet apartment, impregnable and inexorable, reminding you only of the safety blanket of the night you’d ripped away from Norvrandt just as soon as they'd grown accustomed to it. Your hearts set on the Tempest, your companions begged leave to find a suitable answer to penetrating those inky depths, Moren ushering them into the Cabinet of Curiosities—and you were to stay on bedrest, despite all your protests.

But the bartender of the Wandering Stairs didn’t know your friends' well-intentioned edict, and was more than happy to gift the Warrior of Darkness with a bottle of whiskey off the highest shelf, patting your hand affectionately.

_I don’t deserve your kindness._

You swallow the bitterness with a smile.

Were the Light not threatening to rend its way out of you, you might have attempted to finish the bottle on your own. Instead, you take one sip at a time, feeling the lancing fire rip down your throat and settle to a smolder within your belly. You were not one for drinking, but the thought of passing the night with nothing but your own demons to taunt you… it was almost more than you could bear.

His soft, sad smile as he wished you well. The way he looked taken aback when you screamed his name against the raging of the light. The gunshot's deafening echo across the mountain, and the heavy way he fell into a heap before you. And worse still, that damned vision you bore witness to in the sanctuary of the Umbilicus.

Your feelings on the Exarch had been a messy, complicated mess at best, only muddled further into disarray by your brief time together in Kholusia. And now…

You clench your teeth against the pain, take another sip of the blighted drink with a wince.

“You know, I was no drunkard, but I miss drinking more than I thought I would. Just the habit of it, I think.”

Ardbert leans against your kitchenette table, a wry smile on his lips. His eyes are impossibly tender, the compassion in them tightening your throat to a stranglehold.

“Maybe a shot from the Warrior of Darkness will get through to you?” you laugh, reaching the bottle out to him.

He raises a heavy brow at you, nonplussed. “You know as well as I do I’m just going to phase through that. But, thanks all the same.”

“Suit yourself,” you huff, cradling the liquor in your hands.

“Heavy, isn’t it?” Ardbert asks gently, as if he himself fears waking that fearsome beast which surely within you. “What he did. All for _you._ I suspected part of his tale, but I can’t say I realized even half of what he went through.”

Tears threaten to overwhelm once more; you’d tampered them down in front of your companions well enough, but behind locked doors, in front of Ardbert especially so, it felt impossible to hide from them anymore.

“I can’t believe I didn’t realize,” you croak, “so wrapped up in my own head, so absorbed with my task, wrapped around Emet-Selch's finger…”

“Easy to miss a brick wall when you’re looking at your feet,” he huffs. Ardbert moves to sit beside you, as close to affection as his celestial form permitted. His weighty presence is a balm to your agony. “Another trait we have in common, I suppose.”

“It explains… so much. Why I felt how I felt, why it was so _easy_ to talk to him, why I wanted to trust him, to—“ you cut yourself off, occupying your tongue with another pull from the bottle, the taste wickedly strong and lacerating.

If you spoke such sentiments aloud, you feared you could never take them back should the worst befall either of you.

Ardbert always knows, somehow. That which goes unsaid between you. You have a knack for finishing each other’s sentences, either the common bond of trauma or the Mother Crystal’s dubious blessing.

“ _That_ is another thing, we have in common.”

You sense a story in his soft tone. You lean forward expectantly, and he gives you an incredulous look. “Don’t look at me like that! I’m not some country bumpkin who’s about to dump my sordid past on you just because you’re a pretty girl with a sword.”

He draws a croaky laugh from you, evidently his intent; his cerulean eyes crinkle at the edges, unfathomably kind. “Seems only fair, snooping in my room at all bells of the day,” you snip, not unkindly.

He huffs. “I’m a gentleman, don’t you worry. But… you’re right, it _is_ only fair. I’ve seen so much—too much, frankly. Well then. I trust you remember Lamitt—or, Lamimi, as she called herself in the Source.”

You nod, and he continues haltingly, staring down at his gloved hands, flexing and unflexing against the tight leather. “She found me, first. Saved my arse from certain death by pure chance, gave me hell for calling her a man.” He smiles ruefully at the memory. “I’d never met a dwarf before, ignorant fool I was. And that was that. She… never left my side after that.

“Her presence was so constant I forgot what it was like when she wasn’t there. Like the insufferable git I was, I don’t know if I ever fully appreciated how much she did for me—how much she _meant_ to me. Her sister was ailing from this dwarven disease—stoneblight, they called it—and we raided Ronka in search of a cure. And Lamitt found it—she saved not only her sister, but _everyone_ who had fallen ill. And as for thanks… her village excommunicated her. And because she lost her honor... she took off her helm.”

His breath is shaky, and you instinctively reach out to touch his shoulder, a pure reflex from years of playing the comforter, and are _shocked_ when you meet—not _wholly_ solid—but corporeal enough flesh. Lost in his memories, Ardbert continues without noticing your touch.

“All I could think about was how _beautiful_ she was. How beautiful she’d always _been,_ helmet or otherwise. Much like your Exarch, I suspect. And I _meant_ to say something, do something about it… but there was always something else, always another threat to face down. I pushed it off, over and over. And then… it all went to hell.” He gasps against the pain, clenching his teeth against that infernal tide.

“Ardbert,” you murmur, because you can say nothing else. There are not words enough to fix the broken edges of his heart, no deeds that could assuage that cavernous maw of _grief_ within him.

“This is a common moral of all my tales, tales I know—but don’t be like me. Don’t _wait_ for a chance. Take it, godsdammit.” He stares at you with hardened sapphires. “You’re going to get him back, I promise, if it takes all I have.”

You nod, blinking away tears, your heart swimming in the emotional overwhelm. “I might punch him,” you admit with a hoarse chuckle.

“Eh, he deserves it. A little bit, at least.” Ardbert shrugs. “Although you should save your best punches for Emet-Selch’s smug face.”

The matter of Emet-Selch was something _else_ entirely, and you sensed neither of you had heard all there was to see in that matter.

“Do you think she knows?” you whisper instead. “How you felt?”

Ardbert sighs. He turns his head to peer at the window, and from this angle, you can almost pretend Lakeland is covered in blessed darkness once more. “I can only hope. But, I suppose that is all we can ever do— _hope_.”

It is enough. If Ardbert says it is enough, then it is so. For at the precipice of despair, all you hold dear threatening to fade into oblivion…

… hope is all you have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow i really hurt myself in my confusion this time huh


	18. panglossian.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rated G for: G'raha experiences a microaggression and unabashed gremlinry.   
> Alisaie takes issue with the Warrior's chosen consort.  
> Alphinaud & Alisaie, WoL/Graha, one-sided past WoL/Alisaie.

**panglossian** | _adjective_

\ _pan-_ _ ˈ _ _glä-sē-ən_ \

marked by the view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds

excessive optimism

* * *

“Don’t you find them _insufferable?_ ” Alisaie snips.

Alphinaud blinks up at her, fingers lingering on the page he was about to leaf over. Ever Master Louisoix’s grandson, he had done nothing but read since returning to Eorzea. Alisaie certainly _tried_ , but by the time she’d finished her third book on red magick she was biting at the bit to get out of the Rising Stones, explore Eorzea again. But Krile was having none of her excuses. 

“Whatever do you mean, sister?” he asks mildly. “Do have some of the sandwiches Tataru made, they’re really excellent this morning.”

“They’re _always_ excellent,” she corrects, helping herself to one. Egg salad with crisp strips of lettuce, cut into perfect triangles. “But don’t change the subject. They haven’t made you want to run out of here screaming?” 

Alphinaud sighs. “And again, I have _no_ idea what you mean.”

Alisaie gestures to the table across the way. “ _Them_ ,” she hisses conspiratorially. 

She was as happy as anyone that the Warrior of Light had a reprieve from her duties, even glad that they’d managed to bring the Exarch— _G’raha Tia_ , she reminded herself—back with them. At least he’d be less likely to try to throw himself off a cliff for his _inspiration_. 

The Scions had murmured to themselves, in Norvrandt, whether something was happening between the two of them. After their return from the Tempest, there had been a definitive _shift._ Small touches, here and there, overly familiar, broaching the typical boundaries of pure friendship. Lunches taken in solitude, evenings in which the Warrior entirely disappeared without a word, returned with a sparkle in her eye and a lovesick grin on her face.

Truthfully, it had been difficult for Alisaie to stomach at first. She was well aware of the divide between them. She was young, too young to try and approach her in any meaningful way, and had long resigned herself that the Warrior would likely take on a lover. She had imagined them impossibly tall, as daunting and powerful as she herself, a true force of nature to be reckoned with.

And the Exarch had certainly been those things—save for his height—but something about it stung in a way she couldn’t express, only grit her teeth against. But she was not wont to linger on such things—The Warrior was happy, and even if she felt he deserved a punch to the face for all he’d put her through, she couldn’t begrudge the man who made her smile so, especially after so much suffering. 

But this…

Sitting _far_ closer than was necessary, his arm casually wrapped around her shoulders as if it was as easy as breathing. Speaking softly over a plate of food, punctuated with smiles _far_ too friendly for anyone’s reckoning. G’raha Tia’s quarters had remained untouched since he’d arrived, and there was one morning in which Tataru, scarlet and sputtering, refused to speak to anyone for hours after bringing the Warrior breakfast. The older Scions had patted her sympathetically, while Alphinaud and Alisaie were left to put together the pieces, and were horrified at the picture they put together.

Alphinaud looks over his book, chuckling to himself. “Still on about that, are you?” 

“It’s disgusting! They’re about as unsubtle as _you_ were back in—“

“None of that,” he frowns. “Alisaie, jealousy does not befit you.”

“I’m not jealous,” she says, hoping she doesn’t sound _too_ petulant. “Really. It’s just…” She runs her finger around the rim of her teacup, struggling to find words to her ire. “Is he really… _good_ enough, for her?” 

“It is not up to us to determine who is good enough or not for the Warrior, she is entirely capable of making her own decisions—“

“You feel the same way I do about her,” she says, voice low. “Hells, I think we _all_ do.” 

He frowns at that, finally closing his book and setting it to the side. “Fair,” he concedes, “but if no one is to be good enough for her, I daresay he comes the closest out of them all. Leaping through time, suffering one hundred years to save her, to save _us…_ the romance of it all.” He huffs a laugh. “I do not think he expected to sweep her off her feet, but how could one not be?” 

“Easy, he’s a git,” she growls. “Know-it-all, condescending…” 

“A tad panglossian, perhaps—“

“ _Panglossian?”_ Alisaie barks a laugh. “Are you going to start using ridiculous words to describe benign things to sound intelligent again? _Really,_ brother.” 

“As if _you_ know what it means—“

“Obscenely optimistic,” she snaps, smirking. “I might know what it means, but even I can tell you the word is impractical.” 

He fits her with a glare of his typical brotherly irritation. “Fine, fine, but he is truthfully an excellent match for her. While she relies on her instinctual usage of magick and aether, he has practical knowledge of it, and he has _leagues_ of political experience over any of us, beyond even Ser Aymeric himself.”

“You speak as if it is a job interview,” she huffs. “That’s not what I mean. Of course he’s accomplished, it’s easy to be when you’re thoroughly ancient.” 

Alphinaud quiets, before dropping a sugar cube into his drained teacup and drowning it with steaming Ishgardian black tea. 

“He loves her,” he murmurs, “far more than anyone ever has. And she him. Is that not enough, Alisaie? Must he capture the moon itself for her to meet your impossible standards?” 

The Warrior erupts into a fit of giggles, evidently at some clever joke G’raha made, who blushes and grins sheepishly at her. Their conversation drifts into quiet intimacy once more, and Alisaie turns her attention back to her brother. 

“It would be a start,” she huffs. 

“I think even if he did, you _still_ wouldn’t deem him good enough.”

Alisaie grins ruefully. “You’re correct on all accounts, for once.” 

Her reticence for him aside, she could not deny that, for the first time since Alisaie had known her, the Warrior was _truly_ happy. There was no lie to the sparkle in her eyes, the genuine ear-to-ear grin on her face at his quips, breathing life into the very aether itself. And her happiness brought joy to all who knew her, the Scions, closely attuned to her moods, even more so. How could they begrudge the man who brought her such happiness? 

Perhaps before Norvrandt—before _Tesleen_ —she might have ached with the desire to be the one to make her smile so. But now…

…she only hopes she can one day bring such joy to someone. 

But until such a day…

“Hey, catboy!” 

…there was nothing stopping her from torturing the Warrior’s consort. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my first time really writing the twins & my favorite gremlin daughter. i hope it rang true.


	19. where the heart is.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated E for: Explicit sexual content, angst. Discussion of assumed character death.**  
>  It wasn't always rough. Sometimes it was too sweet.  
> takes place after "tooth and nail", in an AU in which they've been fucking since the beginning. WoL/Hooded!Exarch.

**where the heart is** | _idiom_

/ _(h)wer-_ _ t͟ hə- ˈ härt- ɪ _ _z_ /

where one’s true affections are centered

* * *

It wasn’t always fire and brimstone with her. Plunging depths of depravity he never thought himself possible, beholding appetites he never thought capable of beholding, let alone _quenching_ with her. Those shared moments in the darkest of nights terrified him, thrilled him, fed that crushing guilt in his chest, made him fear _himself._ And _oh_ she was a lovely sight then, arms bound, leaving her naked body open and vulnerable for the taking, such lovely, broken pleas falling from her lips as he worked her endlessly, wanting only to serve her in any capacity she would allow. 

He treasured every submission she gave him, that trust that he wouldn’t harm her, wouldn’t take her pleasure solely for himself. But above all…

… He treasured moments like _these._

The Exarch sat upright in her bed, the sheets still warm from where she had slept, his head filled to brim and more with _her._ She had clambered into his lap, wearing nothing but the sheerest nightgown, fisted either side of his hood and kissed him with such sweetness, such sincerity…

“I won’t do anything,” she pleaded against his lips, as if he had the strength to push away left in his bones, “just let me…” he’d captured her lips again, fascinated in how _different_ it could possibly feel like this. She wound her arms about his neck and sighed sweetly, their chests flush together. That damned nightgown rucked around her waist, exposing those thighs he so adored, the ones he told her he’d be happy to die between, and he was too weak to resist raking a hand from her bent knee up to her round bottom, resting there, delighting in the way she shivered at his touch. 

Her hands roamed under his robe, an indulgence he had never before allowed, but it was difficult to say no to her when she slipped her tongue into his mouth like that, sucked on his bottom lip and raked her nails down his chest, keening her delight. 

She pulls away, charting a path down his chin and jaw, kissing crystal and spoken skin alike down the column of his neck. 

“I wish I could mark you like you mark me,” she purrs against the bob of his apple as he swallows hard. “But perhaps…” 

She fumbles with his robes, and he eventually reaches up, undoing the latch on the right, letting the robe fall open. 

She gasps.

The crystal starts at the center of his chest, a starburst of fractals spiderwebbing across his skin, the right more aggressive than the left. Sweeps up his shoulders and collarbones to wing around his neck, threatening to enclose him for good. 

He had nightmares of that crystal blinding him. 

The Warrior trails scorching kisses down his chest, halting when she meets bare skin and _bites,_ sucking a dark mark into his skin. It blooms like a bruised rose against the pallor of his skin. 

Ilms away from the staccato of his heart.

“There,” she hums, satisfied. “Perhaps you won’t forget me so easily.” 

He wants to tell her to bite deeper, to scar him for life, to mark him as hers, hers, _hers_ indefinitely. His Archon marks and Eye of Knowing might have been absorbed by the Tower, but she still had a chance to lay a claim to his body. Before all was said and done.

“My love,” he whispers with reverence, drawing her back up to him, “as if _anyone_ could ever forget you.” He punctuates it with a kiss. Waits for her to reproach him for calling her such a thing so fondly. But she doesn’t. Merely shivers as he runs his mismatched hands down the dip of her waist, finding home at the flare of her hips. 

“Exarch,” she murmurs. How had she turned such a mundane title into something so delicious on her tongue, so profane?

“Mm?” He kisses down the curve of her jaw, delighting in her sweet, familiar taste on his tongue. 

“We go to Kholusia tomorrow,” she whispers, haltingly, “for the final Lightwarden. What… happens after? To…” she hesitates, swallows hard, the arms around his shoulders growing steely. “… to us? Will I ever…” she reaches up to tug at his hood, and his heart _wrenches_ when he pieces together her meaning. 

Her plaintive tone. The impossibly sweet way she looked up at him from behind the dark fringe of her lashes. The way she was so determined to mark him as _hers._

Oh, had he ever erred so grievously? 

A native of Norvrandt would have never asked him such questions, such were the unspoken taboos. And while she had been respectful of such confidentiality…

…perhaps she, like him, could not help but think about what was to come on the morrow. What would happen to all of them once the Light was vanquished. And while he had the dubious advantage of foresight, his death a predetermined venture on her voyage…

… he had kept her in the dark. 

“I’m not sure,” he lies, brushing the fringe of her hair out of her eyes. Lingers on the apples of her cheeks. “But perhaps, when we return, we can… speak on whatever _this_ means, between us.”

He should reject her outright. Make a callous remark, tear her heart to shreds so she wouldn’t stop him from his duty. It would be the swiftest way to ensure his death. Preserve her life. He opens his mouth, bracing himself for the poison on his tongue…

But lying was not a skill that came naturally to him. It was taught, and there were limits to how far he could stretch that abominable skill…

… and as ever, he met his limit at her. 

“I’d like that,” she smiles, kissing him again into silence. Hums her approval against his lips. “Despite my better judgement,” she whispers, “I’ve come to care for you… far more than I could have expected.” She laughs bitterly. “How ridiculous of me, falling for someone whose face I’ve never… but I suppose it wasn’t that important.” 

Words fail him, turning to ash in his mouth, useless and impotent against her affections. 

“Come here,” he whispers instead, tugging her down. Determined to show her what he could not say. Put actions to the words begging to be released.

“Wait,” she whispers. “Let me… I won’t look, I promise…” 

She parts his robes all the way down, exposing his black smalls. Tugs them down just enough to free his straining cock, straddles him, and he almost comes then and there when he realizes she’d been bare the _entire time._

She sinks down onto him, slowly, ilm by ilm. Sighs and cants her hips, and he can do aught but watch her take her pleasure on him, the reversal of roles terrifying him into submission.

It feels like too much when she is flush against him. Scorching hot and impossibly tight. Salvation itself. He knows it’s not enough when she slides up and down, falls forward to crash her lips into his again. 

“There,” she hums. “Always wanted… like this…” 

He laughs, a broken, sobbing sound into her mouth. “I won’t last,” his voice is hoarse. 

Her eyes glimmer with a touch of fire. Brushes her thumb across his lips. “Good.” 

She sets the pace, and it is _achingly_ slow, drawing him out and piercing herself on him to the hilt, as steady and unchanging as the tides themselves. He can do little but weather her storm, palming at the outline of her breasts through the nightgown, eventually losing himself so much in her that he crushes himself to her chest, mouthing at her pert nipples, dampening the sheer silk with his mouth. 

He wants to throw off the cowl, take her as he _was,_ not this shadow of a man, make her cry out _his_ name, not this title thrust upon his shoulders, a yoke threatening to break him each day. 

“Please,” she whimpers, and he can feel her tremulous voice, “finish in me, _fill_ me, Exarch, please…” 

He clutches her like he’s dying and sobs her name into her breast, into her heart. Her love is a torment he cannot face, guillotining him raw and broken to the bone.

She draws him up, kisses the tears on his cheeks. Her eyes are filled with an unspeakable tenderness he does not deserve. 

He can only pray she will not forget him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> help i'm drowning akfjsjkfj  
> listened to [wolf by skott](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH3joguNYyk) while writing this.


	20. aureate.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated E for: Mildly dubious consent, some violence + explicit sexual content.**  
>  the grandpa on grandpa action no one ~~apparently some of you~~ asked for,  
> or  
> op attempts to make emet-selch/exarch plausible.  
> hydaelyn have mercy.

**aureate** | _adjective_

\  _ ˈ _ _ȯr-ē-ət_ \

Marked by grandlioquent and rhetorical style

Of a golden color or brilliance

* * *

How do you boil a frog, his Sharlayan professors once asked, in his first semester of academia.

“Slowly,” G’raha had answered unerringly, “so slowly the frog cannot leap out of the pot.”

What once seemed so obvious to him, an apt metaphor for manipulation and deception, had entirely left his mind over hundreds of years. Replaced by the pressing concerns of two doomed timelines with only one way out, with people’s pressing needs as they died in droves to Sin Eater attacks, to the painstaking preparation to summon the Warrior of Light. All these things and more crowded his mind, and while he thought surely, with such age, one such as he was incapable of being persuaded, being manipulated…

Fifteen years before the Exarch summoned the first Scion, Emet-Selch swaggered into the Ocular, surprising the Exarch into spilling his quills and papers all over his desk, stumbling to pick them up.

“I’m but a traveler,” he had smiled, taking a mockery of a bow, deep-set golden eyes peering up at him. “And you, my friend, have captured my attention.”

He had demanded him leave the premise at once, summoned the powers of Allag, ready to use all at his disposal to eliminate him.

Emet-Selch huffed, irritated. “And _this_ is how the Crystarium treats her guests! Fine, fine.” Disappeared into the very aether with a _crack._ And he was gone.

For now.

It was far from the last he’d heard of him; the very next morning Emet-Selch caught up with him as he was making his morning rounds, overseeing the nearly completed construction of the Musica Universalis.

“That strut isn’t load-bearing,” Emet-Selch whispered, suddenly _there_ , surprising him into yelping. “It’ll crumble like paper in a few years. Better to move it…” his long, gloved finger drifted over the schematics he was holding, “… _here_ , where it’ll better serve a purpose. You see?”

The Exarch frowned at his suggestion, then strode over to the lead carpenter guildmaster, presenting him with his idea. The guildmaster agreed at once, spoke to his workers moving the strut.

“How did you…?” the Exarch turned to speak to his bizarre guest, but as quickly as he had came, he’d vanished into thin air.

No matter. He’d certainly turn up again.

And turn up he did.

Two nights later, while he was examining the gardens in the belly of the Crystarium, one of the first finished pieces of architecture, lingering over the pea blossoms and Azeyma roses, cradling their blossoms with a careful crystal hand.

This time he felt the aether shift like levin on the wind, and spoke aloud, “I should thank you for helping us with that strut.”

Emet-Selch chuckled, a dark, ugly sound. It was a sound that haunted his dreams. “Architecture was my forte, once upon a time. Perhaps you can thank me with dinner, my _lord._ ”

“I would know your name, first.” The Exarch countered.

Emet-Selch rolled his eyes, settled a hand on his slender hips.

“You’re impossible,” he growled.

Into the aether once more, chased away by his myriad questions.

He did not see Emet-Selch until the following year. Lyna became captain of the guard. The mayor of Eulmore was murdered. The Fae Kingdom slaughtered a Lightwarden, Titania grew corrupted, and the Fae halved their population to lock away their beloved King. Their grief, their anguish, was felt in the very soil itself.

A basket of freshly picked oranges, most certainly not of this world, bound with a scarlet ribbon of densest red. No letter, no card.

He had no doubt who had sent them.

Fragrant though they were, even if they were not all poisoned, one surely was. He burned them in Lakeland, their rinds swelling and exploding with juicy freshness, wasted potential.

Two months later Emet-Selch stormed into his office. He didn’t bother looking up from his paperwork.

“You didn’t eat _one?_ ”

The Exarch split open a letter decisively with his knife. “I don’t know your name. I did not know if they were poisoned. I could hardly eat them, let alone give them to my people.”

“Emet-Selch.” He snapped. “You may call me that. And what of you? You hide your face from the world, from your people. How are _you_ so much more trustworthy, Lord Exarch?”

He set the letter down. “My actions,” he said softly, with conviction, “decades of proven reliability, leading my people through trial after trial. Faith in a better tomorrow. They do not question my past because they have witnessed my character through my deeds. Can you say the same?”

“Many, many, _many_ years ago, yes,” Emet-Selch demurred. “But no matter. I shall have you for dinner soon enough.” That same mocking bow again, his glimmering gilded eyes never leaving his, as if he could see straight through the shadows of his hood.

He shuddered with anticipation and hated himself for it.

Something in his tone triggers a memory. A Garlean emperor, lover of the arts and architecture. The Exarch promptly departed to consult his libraries, tearing through five volumes of Garlean historical tomes until he found the illustration haunting his mind.

_Solus zos Galvus._

The rendering was accurate enough. A bored expression, that heavy brow, but pencil and charcoal alone could not capture the tenacity of his eyes, the charming way his lips curved with condesencion.

His spoken fingers linger on the page, tracing the curve of his cheekbone, the cant of his jawline, arrogant and cruel.

He slammed the book shut and threw it onto the pile.

Three months pass by. He tried not to think about him. _Refused_ to open the book again, told himself he wasn’t impatient for his return.

That he doesn’t miss his company, in a strange way. That he doesn’t want to know _more._

 _He’s a curiosity,_ he told himself. _And you are short on those, and it is easy to become fascinated by a puzzle with no solution._

This time Emet-Selch leaves a tin of tea on his desk. It is in perfect condition, wrapped in that same scarlet ribbon.

Strangest of all, it is not of the First. It is _Ishgardian._

He contemplated throwing it away again. He _should_ bin it, burn it like he destroyed those oranges, that dubious peace offering.

A most twisted compulsion drives him to set the Boilmaster on. Taking his favorite, most well-worn chipped mug, stealing a cup of cream from the kitchens.

It was better than he expected, and he languished in the bitter, _delightful_ taste of it. A taste he would never be able to separate from Emet-Selch thereafter.

That night he dreamt, and _he_ lurked in every corridor, in the shadows save for those eyes. Those eyes which bare his very soul, strip away all his pretenses and prejudices, leave him nothing but G’raha Tia begging to be seen.

He returned within the week, barked a laugh when he peered into the Exarch’s mug.

“So tea is your vice,” he drawled. “And how was it?”

“Excellent,” the Exarch said truthfully. “Would you like a cup?”

“ _Now_ we’re talking,” Emet-Selch grinned. It was not a nice gesture. “Brew it hotter than the hells, and bring me the entire sugar bowl.”

The Exarch watched at Emet-Selch dumps six sugar cubes into his teacup, taking a sip before nodding his approval. The cream went untouched.

“Solus zos Galvus, was it?” The Exarch said carefully, waiting for the man to take offense and _snap_ out of existence again.

Instead, he nodded. “Clever. I went by that, some time ago. On the Source, I am _still_ that man, building my empire, whipping my son into shape, watching my grandson turn into a lunatic.”

“You can go as you please,” he murmured, wondering, “between the Shards.”

“I’m playing by a different set of cards than you,” Emet-Selch stated, “an unfair advantage, really. And there is no doubt you are a native, are you not?”

The Exarch stayed silent, contemplating. Would it do to deny such an obvious fact? If Emet-Selch could leap through time, there was little he would not know. Perhaps by giving a little, he might gain further information, information which could be used to aid the Warrior…

“I am,” he confirmed. Emet-Selch’s vicious grin widened.

“Doubtless you are. Perhaps I should lay my cards on the table. See where you play into them, hmm?”

It took three cups of tea to work their way through Emet-Selch’s tale, so wild, so ridiculous it did not belie belief. Hydaelyn and Zodiark, a glimmering city he once called home, the Ascians… the Ascians were well-chronicled in the tales of the Warrior of Light’s adventures, and Emet-Selch filled in all the necessary gaps to paint a cohesive picture.

“It will take me weeks to verify all of this,” the Exarch sighed, “and you cannot expect I will trust an _Ascian_ so easily.”

“Are we not so alike?” Emet-Selch countered. “Impossibly long-lived, leaders of nations, set adrift from time itself? There is more alike to us than not, my Lord Exarch.”

He stood; still seated in his own chair, the Ascian towered over him. He bent down at the waist, to pinch the Exarch’s chin between thumb and forefinger.

“Think on it,” he murmured. His breath is sweet and bitter across his face.

With a _crack,_ he was gone.

That was the first night he thought of him long after he retired to his quarters, his face _burning_ from his touch, his hand slipping beneath the covers to take himself in hand.

 _It meant nothing,_ he told himself as he stroked. _This is only natural._ Precum swells at his tip. _No one will know._

But when he came into his hand, biting down into the pillow to clamp down on his guilt and the scream building in his throat, he felt very, very _seen._

As if a pair of golden eyes were witnessing his depravity, and joyed in his turmoil.

A year came and went. He forced himself not to think on him, relegated that shameful moment to the far reaches of his mind. Reread Count Fortemp’s chronicle of the Warrior three times, a fourth to be certain. Fell in love with _her_ all over again, started making preparations for her summoning.

On the eve of the event, Emet-Selch visited again.

It was late, far later than any of his other visits.

“Miss me, did you?” Emet-Selch crooned, setting another tin of tea on his desk beside his crystal hand. The Exarch startled up from his work.

“As much as one misses a lesion,” he countered. _Yes, gods, yes._

“You’re summoning her, aren’t you?” Emet-Selch smiled. “Your Warrior of Light. How quaint.”

The Exarch nodded slowly. “How did you…?”

“Good guess,” Emet-Selch smiled. “I shall have to give you something to remember me by, hmm? Can’t be dallying with you while the Ascian-slayer is around.”

He edged onto the desk, leaned forward enough to cause the Exarch to back into his chair, before reaching out—

The Exarch grabbed his hand in both of his as Emet-Selch’s wrapped around his hood.

“Come on, boy,” he sneered. “So shy even now, are you? Even after you touched yourself thinking of me?”

He struggled, digging his nails into the thick cloth of his sleeve, shaking with the effort. “It is not a matter of being _shy,_ ” he snarled.

“ _She_ might know you, but I do not. And it wouldn’t be very fun for either of us if I spoiled your secret, would it?” Emet-Selch purred.

The sound halted him.

The Ascian used his hesitation to rip the hood off the Exarch’s head.

Furious scarlet eyes met haughty golden. He reaches up to card his fingers through his graying hair, a shockingly intimate gesture.

“You’ll do.”

He did not think any evening could approach the shame he felt when he took himself in hand and thought of Emet-Selch.

But as the Ascian always proved to him, time and time again, there are depths without depths, depravities still yet to be touched, thirsts to be quenched he did not think he held.

The Ascian fell to his knees before him. The Exarch squirmed in the chair, watching. Waiting.

“How long has it been?” Emet-Selch asked, his voice lined with velvet. “Since someone had you.”

The Exarch takes a very, very dry swallow.

“A very long time,” he confessed. “Not since long before I came to Norvrandt.”

“Try not to come all at once,” he drawled.

And Emet-Selch lifted up his robe, fixing him with one last glimmering look before slipping aside his smalls and wrapping his mouth around his impossibly hard cock.

He should have pushed him away. He shouldn’t have given in. Shouldn’t have let himself be seduced by a godsdamned _Ascian_ of all things.

He tongue worked him, slow, languid, down the underside of his shaft. He came off him with an obscene smack. “You can imagine her, if it helps,” he rumbled against him.

He didn’t reply; for the first time in the Exarch’s life, words had left him entirely. Merely canted his hips further into his scorching mouth, shuddering when Emet-Selch hummed his approval around his cock.

He did try, to imagine her. And it wasn’t an unappealing picture, either.

But he would be lying to himself if he didn’t desire Emet-Selch in just as profound of a way, a darkness snarling in his soul he could not escape, _would_ not escape.

He came into his mouth with a shout, “ _Emet—!”_ clutching at the man’s hair from beneath his robes, tears at the edges of his eyes as he released onto his waiting tongue and lips.

He rode him out the entire way, before slowly coming out from beneath the robes, licking his swollen lips and looking every inch a god of hell itself, handsome and cruel. “I didn’t expect you to even last that long,” Emet-Selch chuckled. “We’ll have to work on that, won’t we?”

“I… I… won’t…”

“Oh,” he purred, standing up again, before leaning over the chair and caging the Exarch in with his broad shoulders, hair falling in those aureate eyes. “But you _will._ ”

He kissed him then. It was not a kiss in any sense he had ever known. He tasted his own seed on his tongue and it felt like kissing a demon, terrified he’d grow bored and try to kill him then and there. Emet-Selch’s hand came up to wrap around his throat, gently, promising.

“I’ll be back,” he promised.

Gods help him, he looked forward to it every day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen. listen. i tried to warn you. i tried.  
> i blame specifically CosmicTurnabout and celestial_txt, although every single soul in the bookclub is responsible for this madness.  
> my horrible, horrible dream is to spin this into a cursed OT3 between emet/exarch/wol, with poor exarch being the filling in that sandwich for once.  
> *yeets self into the dumpster fire*


	21. foibles.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated E for: explicit sexual content, descriptions of food, and the most indulgent piece of fluff I have ever written.**  
>  Something of a sequel to ["take the dark, carve me out a home"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25917334), but not required reading.  
> WoL/G'raha, post-5.3.

**foibles** | _noun_

\ _ˈfȯi-bəl_ \

a minor weakness or eccentricity in someone's character.

the part of a sword blade from the middle to the point. 

* * *

As the Warrior of Light and Darkness, Hydaelyn’s Chosen, Eikon and Ascian Slayer, Liberator of Ala Mhigo, there were very, _very_ few evenings you could look back on and count as _perfect._ Peace, even for a few stolen moments, was a rarity in your line of work, a duskstar winking out of existence the moment you laid eyes on it, an incandescent daydream to be entertained on the winding journeys to your next gruesome task.

You were taking this opportunity in fistfuls, greedy, indulgent, _gluttonous_ on satisfaction, gorging yourself on love, on _him._

If you were a child presented with a full-tiered cake after skipping breakfast, Raha was a kit in a sweetshop, as if he’d be pulled back to reality at the smallest whim. Eyes wider than Voeburt coins, reflecting the hundreds of paper lanterns with perfect alacrity, a scarlet mirror of boundless depth and glimmer. The streets of Kugane swelled to bursting in the evenings, Kogane Domi even more tightly packed with locals and _iijin_ alike, trading and eating and _living._ If any looked upon your features and recognized what they saw, they did not show it; you lingered in that bliss of anonymity, heads tilted up to gaze upon the cant of the gilded roofs, gilded and incandescent against the stark velvet sky.

“I did not know such a place existed,” Raha breathes, reverent. You tangle your fingers tighter in his, inextricable.

“We should return, when autumn truly sets in,” you hum. “The maple leaves look as if aflame.”

“How strange,” he murmurs to you, “to say such a thing with surety.” His eyes burn with a strange fire, a remnant of the Exarch still embedded in him. Too-old eyes set in a gentle, kind face.

You cant your head up to his. “And should I not?” A challenge, marked by a teasing grin.

 _Our journey will never end,_ the promise unsaid hovers between you.

You hadn’t noticed it on the First, but his eyes crinkle with sweet contentment when he smiles, narrowing to pleased slivers. Perhaps you’d never really seen him smile so until now.

“You should,” his voice is throaty, sweeter than honey, barely heard above the din of the crowd. He presses a kiss to your forehead, mussing your hair with his breath.

And peace it was.

When Raha grows tired of fawning over the finer points of Hingashi architecture, eyes flitting with a scholar’s curiosity, you wind your way back to the Shiokaze Holstery, and a server recognizes you at a glance and ushers you to a private lounge, and Raha barks a startled laugh as you slip off your shoes and curl up on the tatami mats.

“I quite like this,” he admits, kneeling as a native Doman would before taking a cautious sniff of the small clay cup filled with warmed _junmaishu._ You’d downed yours promptly, as Gosetsu and Hien showed you many, many moons ago. It burns clear and bright as starlight down your throat.

“There is a reason Kugane remains so popular,” you smile. “Something about the city, the way _something_ is always happening… it’s enchanting.”

“I feel I could stay here a moon and not see everything it has to hold.” A sliding door opens, hushed and quiet. No service in Eorzea could hope to rival the hospitality of Doma, and you are served a feast fit for, maybe not a king, but a princeling of some renowned. Freshly caught shrimp tempura fried to a golden crisp, perfect mounds of pristine rice, perfectly arranged plates of sashimi—mackerel, salmon, neatly coiled squid—a small flotilla of oysters neatly packed on ice, and chilled _junmaishu_ to chase it all down.

Raha raised his eyebrows, but sampled everything, and you teased him when he found he had a liking for the sashimi, fishing a sliver of salmon off your plate when he’d finished his helping with a distinctly feline grin.

When you’re nearly full to bursting dessert is presented: sponge so soft it splits effortlessly to your spoon, laden with rich swirls of créme pâtissiére with delicate slivers of pear, sweetened by a brutal summer, glazed to gleaming, cinnamon and cardamom lingering on your tongue. You feel decadent and exploitative, Raha even more so, who eats his in small, painstaking bites, all but licking the plate clean.

 _A hundred years of rationing,_ you realize, the pain hitching in your throat.

“I do hate to mother you,” you interrupt the silence, “but I find I’m quite unable to stop myself—“

“And I find,” —his eyes have deepened to the color of a dark red wine, a color you cannot help but associate with the past few nights together— “I do not mind.”

“A relief,” you sigh. “So, how do you fare?”

Raha rests his hand on the table, the right, one you are still surprised to see so hale and whole, and drums his fingers against the wood. “Physically I am quite hale, if only a little exhausted from being kept up all night by a certain esteemed hero in my sheets,” and his smirk ignites a righteous blush in your cheeks.

He continues undaunted. “but that is only part of it. Truthfully, I am existing in a sort of daze. Each time I close my eyes I fear I will wake up from this most wonderful of dreams, slumped over a book in the Ocular, a meeting to attend, a siege on our doorstep. And yet… as relieved as I am to be free of the Exarch, there is, as always, something bittersweet to such a parting.”

“You have everything you’ve ever wanted, but you know not what to do with it,” you murmur. He nods his assent.

“Precisely. I _knew_ my position as the the Exarch—even after you—“

“— _we_ —“ you interrupt doggedly.

“—brought back the night,” a touch of heat slips into his timbre, much to your thrill, “I had the conundrum of sending the Scions back home. But as G’raha Tia the Historian, my sole concern was solving the puzzle of Syrcus Tower, one that is now, far more thoroughly than I ever dreamed, explored and catalogued.”

The divide of the table feels far too large for your comfort, and you have to stop yourself in your tracks from clambering over the damned thing to fall into his lap, comfort the softened way his ears flatten to his head.

“You do realize that the instant we’re back in Revenant’s Toll the Scions intend you invite you.”

His ears perk like scarlet flags. “Indeed?”

You bark a laugh, stifling it poorly behind your hand. “What, you thought we’d leave you alone for a life of boring peace? You bedded the wrong woman if that was your intention, Raha.”

He flushes, turning his cream-colored skin a mottled red, freckles spangling his cheeks. It is unspeakably lovely. “I did not dare assume I had the talent.”

You don’t even attempt to hide the groan that leaves you. “ _Really?_ After all you’ve done to save our hides, you thought _you_ were the one with one too many foibles?”

He doesn’t answer, looking abashed and sheepish.

_Yes._

The answer hangs in the air like a dissident cord, one you intend to correct before the dawn.

The streets are subdued when you walk back into the night air; autumn’s nip has intensified, brisk and welcome, the promise of first frost on the wind. It would be a chilly night in the Bokairo Inn, but—

“Follow me,” you whisper to Raha. He kens to your mischievousness, ears pricking at your hiss.

“Lead the way.”

It was a path you’d noticed, never used, only entertained in idle daydreams. The Bokaisen Hot Springs closed after the midnight hour, but if one edged around the side, crept up the rock face… it was very, _very_ easy to slip inside, getting your feet only a little wet.

As soon as you find yourselves inside, you immediately begin stripping off your clothes—a lovely dress you’d been hoping Raha would take off himself—dumping them unceremoniously in a heap under the veranda.

“A-All the way?” Raha croaks as you step out of your smalls, naked as your name day, gooseflesh leaping across your skin against the chilly sea breeze.

“Scared, catboy?” you challenge with a grin, all teeth.

He rolls his eyes at you, unwinding his scarf before pulling his tunic over his head. “You’re going to terrify some poor custodian, looking like that.”

You shrug, letting your eyes rove freely over all that lovely skin being exposed, ilm by ilm. “I mean, no one’s exactly going to tell the Liberator of Ala Mhigo to _not_ be somewhere. May as well enjoy my few perks.”

You step delicately into the steaming waters, the smooth, worn down rocks beneath your feet warmed by the geothermal wellspring. You let yourself float, the mineral water easing your muscles into submission ilm by ilm, watching with amusement as Raha shirks his black smalls. He is spry and well-muscled, the moonlight rendering him an ethereal wraith save for the shock of vermillion on his head, those eyes gleaming like ghostfire, and the swish of his tail.

“That feels lovely,” he gasps, working his way out towards you. You’re at the edge of the pool, dangling your arms off the edge. The Ruby Sea unfolds before you, silent, darkened ships trembling on the horizon, the moon their solitary guide. Raha wraps his arms around you, snug and protective, sighing into your damp hair as he comes to rest his chin on your shoulder. The Bokairo Inn pours rice wine into the waters, said to have age-defying elements, and the scent is sweet and heady, working in tandem with the salt air and earthy minerals.

You spin in his arms, hook yours around his neck. Fingers tangle in his hair, snarl in his braid before haphazardly working off the tie to unfurl his locks. He huffs at your insistence, reaching up to his hair clips before you stop him.

“Let me,” you insist, nose to nose as you work them free, setting them aside for safekeeping on a damp rock. He hums his appreciation, strong, roughened hands settling at your waist.

“You know I adore you, don’t you?” Your whisper is barely perceptible over the bubbling of the hot springs, so close your lips brush his.

“And I you.” He closes the gap, brief and silken. Your blood thrums, heady and resplendent, with the need to take, take, _take._

But you stay determined on your course. “But this is about _you,_ and what you desire.”

He frowns at that. “What I desire is what you—“

You cut him off with your lips, an effective enough muzzle. He takes the opportunity to run his tongue across your parted lips, playing dirty, _distracting_ you.

Godsdamn him, it was working.

You back him into a shallow shelf, pressing inexorably onto his shoulders until he is seated, the waters lapping against his bare freckled shoulders. “No one, in a hundred years, asked you what you wanted.”

You cup his upturned face in your hands, his pupils blown wide, deliciously dark, as you come astride him. “I’m asking, Raha.”

You cant your hips forward; beneath the waters his hardened length brushes against your core, already so needy. His hands slide down the swell of your hips, curving around your bottom, digging _hard_ into the pliant flesh.

“What do you want?”

He swallows hard. “You ask me this _now_?”

You chuckle, sinking down to kiss the curve of his jaw, the salty, clean taste of him familiar and sweet. “I won’t move till you answer.”

He huffs. “Is this how your interrogate all your prisoners?”

You lave your tongue across the silken skin of his neck, where the slash of his Archon mark reaches out towards his apple. You bite slow, mesmerized by how he _prickles_ beneath you, muscles growing wiry, a panty moan on his lips.

“Only the pretty ones,” you purr.

“None will have survived,” he gasps. “Alright. What _I_ want…” he falters, and you can _feel_ the machinations of his mind working to a frenzy. How best to evade your questions, the right way to _please_ you.

You slide your apex against him, your folds slipping down his shaft, humming your pleasure.

 _“Fuck,”_ he snarls, the hands on your rump growing insistent, pushing down. He takes a rattling breath, collects himself. “I want to be a Scion—and I never want to leave your side, even if you half-kill me in the process.”

“Is that _truly_ what you want, Raha?” your nose skims down his neck as your lips take you further, to the slender branches of his collarbones, leaving a flutter of nips and kisses in your wake.

One of his hands breaks away, arcs up your spine to cradle your neck, crushing your lips to his. He takes you without quarter and you kindle to his ember, drawing in a ragged gasp as his tongue slips into your mouth, tasting of the sea and flame.

_“Yes.”_

He draws you down onto him—you keen into his mouth as the head of his cock slips into you, feasting on his taste, wriggling your hips for more, more, _more._ Another ilm. He tears away from your lips to fit your breast in his mouth, your nipples puckered against the freezing sea breeze, laved by his scorching mouth.

“Raha, _Raha_ ,” you mewl, fisting his carmine locks, hard enough to surely sting.

He grunts around your flesh. Pushes upward into you—hilts himself in you. That unspeakable fullness you’d only recently discovered, a sensation you’d never felt before him, your muscles squeezing, feeling so completely inextricable, twined, tangled together.

He moves again, the slide of him an inexorable pull, tidal and carnal. You find yourself pleading, begging, “come in me, Raha, _take what you want_ —“

Tangles a hand in your waterlogged hair, open-mouthed and gasping as he finds his goal; the tender part where the column of your neck meets your shoulder, a spot he’d marked his own again and again these past few suns, and you squeeze around him in anticipation as his teeth graze your skin.

“I intend to,” he purrs, dark as midnight tide.

Thrusts up into your pliant flesh again and _bites_ down, the pain heavenly and rapturous. The waters push and pull around you as he takes you, a veritable _beast_ unfurling beneath you, “ _Mine,”_ he hisses, coiling as if to pounce. Had it ever felt so unspeakably lovely, to be possessed, claimed, staked upon?

“Yours,” you agree helplessly, and he hesitates, before jerking up into you with your name on his lips, profane and love-soaked, broken and whole in the selfsame stroke. Warmth hotter than the springs coils deep in you, leaving you gasping against his parted, lovestung lips.

You are boneless in his arms, cradling your head into his neck. A quiet zephyr ghosts across you, cooling your scorched skin, balm to the fever. You tilt your head up to meet his eyes; they are softened and so, _so_ full of warmth, embers betokening home and sanctuary.

“You’re mine,” he whispers tenderly, stroking your cheek, “just as I am yours.”

It is a foible worth tolerating, a compromise you are more than content to surrender yourself to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i challenged myself to write the most tooth-rotting healthy relationship fluff I could possibly muster, and 2.5k words later, here we are.  
> this was more difficult than any of the angst.  
> written to the dulcet tones of hozier's ”NFWMB.”


	22. argy-bargy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated M for: alcohol and Exarch being belligerently flirted with.**  
>  A follow-up to "ache." He merely wants to apologize.  
> Dancer!WoL/Exarch.

**argy-bargy** | _noun_

\  ˌ _är-jē-_ ˈ _bär-jē_ \

british slang for a lively discussion

* * *

“I can’t believe you _dropped your drink,_ ” The Warrior snickers behind her hand. “The entirety of Eulmore will be talking about you and your little dancer.” 

The Exarch had made the mistake of visiting the Warrior’s quarters to apologize for his behavior; it had been a decidedly _tense_ amaro-ride home, Alphinaud himself thoroughly discomfited and chattering nervously until excusing himself. It would not do for such… _tension_ to linger, and so, bearing a peace offering of wine, he had endeavored to apologize first. 

She had let him in easily enough, pouring them two very full glasses of wine before breaking the silence with that godsdamned _enchanting_ giggle. 

“ _I_ cannot believe you went to such extents,” he huffs, defensive, feeling the heat rise in his cheeks. “Was that your first such… _performance_?” 

She frowns, opens her mouth to speak, then closes it, before finally responding. “In a… public capacity, yes. I’ve been trained for dancing my entire life, make many a pretty gil on the streets of Ul’dah. But never… never quite like that.” 

_Public…?_ His mind wanders to old, darkened haunts. Of a dance met for him and him alone, and far less clothes between them. _Control yourself!_ He grinds his heels into the flagstones, grits his teeth.

“Ah. Your… improvisation skills are to be commended, then,” he manages a weak smile before taking another drink. _Get the hells out of here before she eats you alive._

The wrong phrasing. By the Twelve, she was a viper all her own. 

“I told you, the Queen told me to get you to react,” she rolls her eyes. “Truthfully I didn’t think you _would_.”

The comment is out of his mouth before he can clamp down on it. “No one was forcing you to try to gain employment. You could have easily—“ 

“You and Alphinaud are the ones that put me up to it!” she groans, throwing her hands up with exasperation. He is very, _very_ thankful she is in her slightly more modest dancer’s apparel, but the memory of her oiled skin and _scent_ lingers on his robes still. “Don’t complain if the chocobo you bet on wins, Exarch.” 

He tries to choose his words carefully, feeling the precarious balance of the conversation threatening to give way. “I am simply stating that I did not expect such… _enthusiasm_ on your behalf.” 

Her eyes narrow. “ _You_ certainly weren’t complaining at that moment, my _lord.”_ A smirk twists on her fair features, vulturous, carnivorous. _“_ I felt as much.” 

A mottled flush rips across his features; he clears his throat, unable to meet her eyes. She was absolutely correct, of course. From the moment she’d stepped on stage he’d been unable to control the… still _human_ parts of him, and she doubtlessly, situated squarely in his lap, had felt as much. 

“I-I-I am an old man, who is highly unused to such… flirtations,” he stammers, swallowing thickly. “I apologize, but it was entirely out of my control.” 

“Figures,” she huffs. “How long has it been, then?” 

“Since...?”

Gods, he _never_ should have come here.

“You know.” She waves her hand carelessly. “The last time anyone was close with you like that.” 

He nearly chokes on his wine. Leave it to the godsdamned Warrior of Darkness to ask him such a question as if it was asking what he had for breakfast. 

_“Ah,_ ” he rubs his hands on his robes, palms clammy. “Erm.” 

_Aether-streaked skies, shards of crystal piercing the earth’s crust. And her, leaving him in the dust, lovely as ever, unconsciously showering him with affection in that peculiar way of her, rendering him a lovestruck mess stifling his cries in lonely cold sheets._

“A very, _very_ long time. I am but an old man, after all.” 

She coughs into her hand, a discreet sound. “Not all of you.” 

_Surely_ he heard her wrong. “E-Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” she beams, affecting innocence. 

He’d heard correct. 

Althyk save him. 

“I must ask, if you do still feel… attraction, why do you not act on it? Find someone to be with?” 

There were two parts to his answer. One, was that he’d simply been too busy. With so much at stake, any casual dalliance could set him off-balance, a needless sacrifice. Letting Lyna into his life had been a risk in and of itself. 

But, the larger part was…

He only wanted her. He’d only _ever_ wanted her. That dance was a dream he never even _dared_ allow himself to entertain, and it had set his very flesh afire with pure bloodlust. He didn’t have the faculties to survive such torture. 

“It simply wasn’t a concern,” he says instead. “I am part of the Tower, and as such, such… appetites are all but lost to me.” 

She crosses, recrosses her legs. A flash of devastating flesh, her supple thigh, and his grip on his glass tightens. 

“Forgive me, but you seemed… rather _starved_ earlier,” she demurs. 

Starved indeed. 

It would be a long, _long_ night for him. 

“Yes, well.” He finishes his wineglass, sets it down on the kitchenette table. “If I may say so, you are… very beautiful. I daresay none could resist your charms.” He nods his head to her, all but running for the door. “Rest well, Warrior. Ahm Araeng awaits on the morrow.” 

“Allow me.” She moves lightly to the door, opening it for him. “And Exarch…” 

He turns to her, mouth dry, crystal hand digging into the door. Her eyes twinkle with mirth, and she cocks her head with amusement. Gods help him, if she offered _anything_ he’d be entirely unable to help himself, he’d give her anything for another moment of rapture. 

“I _thoroughly_ enjoyed myself. Good night.” 

She closes the door, leaving him stunned and wordless, a war waging in his mind. 

Oh, the coming days would be difficult indeed, for reasons that had naught to do with some noble struggle between light and dark. He takes quick strides back to the Tower, mind racing on her words, spinning them in all directions, that twisted fantasy in his mind growing only more and more vivid…

“Have a bit of an argy-bargy, milord?”

He halts in his tracks, spins to face the Dossal Gate Guard he’d walked straight past. _“What?”_

“An argy-bargy,” he says meekly. “Erm, a domestic? A kerfuffle?” 

_I’ve truly lost my mind,_ he thinks. _This man is not speaking a language I know._

“You seem rather upset,” the guard clarifies. “Never seen you like that. S-Sorry for intruding.” 

“Erm. Yes. Ah.” Was it truly written so plainly on him?!“I’m quite fine, thank you.” 

The guard bows, looking as if he thoroughly regrets asking at all, and the Exarch slips into his Tower, thinking only of a freezing shower…

… Knowing it would not be enough to quench the hellfire kindling in his heart. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have a bit of an argy-bargy did you mate  
> an arjee-barjee bruv  
> help me i'm drowning why is this so funny to me  
> pour one out for blueballin exarch kids  
> i had notre dame's ”hellfire” stuck in my head the entire time writing this


	23. shuffle.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated E for: explicit sexual content, existential angst, discussion of canonical character death.**  
>  An alternative ending to ["done for good, good as dead." ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25750450)It _is_ required reading, this will be on the test! 😤 ~~i'm kidding~~  
>  F!WoL/Exarch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _She nodded, then shuddered with a dark laugh. “Now I can’t sleep for other reasons, Exarch.”  
>  Her tone was implicit and he couldn’t stop the groan that ripped from his throat.  
> “Sleep, damn you.” He pressed her head into his chest. “I still have dream powder in my robes,” he promised, not knowing if he truly possessed the strength to fish it out. Don’t, he pleaded with her in his mind, because if I give you this body I will give you everything without hesitation. Every secret, every truth, everything. _

**shuffle** | _verb_

\ _ˈshə-fə_ \

to move back and forth, one place to another

to mix in a mass; to jumble

to rearrange

* * *

She stilled in his arms, a hummingbird held captive, her warm breath ghosting over his crystal-and-spoken marbled flesh, hovering over the ragged shuffle of his heart. He feels her lashes brush against his bare skin, and he’ shudders as if stung, struggling to control his breathing.

“You feel it too, don’t you,” she whispers, barely perceptible over the asynchronous rhythm of their gasps. “Whatever _this_ is.”

“I have always felt it,” he says, quiet, vulnerable. “I don’t know how I could not.”

She squirms closer to him, her warm leg hitching over his bony hip, and there is nothing but two, very thin layers of their smalls between them, all the barriers of pretense and titles and armor stripped away to merely the two of them.

“Exa—“

“War—“

He swallows, hard, the air feeling thin and quickly evaporating. “We can’t…”

“I know,” she whimpers, but she works herself _closer_ to him, soft breasts flattening against his chest, nuzzling her nose into him, lips pressed against his skin. “I know, but… I still _want_ to.”

His blood _roars_ in his veins, riotous, carnivorous, infuriating. To take and be taken, to give and to _be_ given, sweetest, utmost surrender. The shame of how desperately he wanted her, the crushing guilt of hiding so much from her, and the promise of complete and total rapture should this go further than a brief kiss.

If she ran her hands through his hair, pressing him to her, she’d know. If her fingers drifted down to this spine, she’d know. The absolute darkness of this room buried in the mountain offered him a modicum of protection… but that was only one edge to the dagger, was it?

To love her from afar, burning with a righteous sort of unrequited desire, was tolerable in its own right. But to have the fruit of temptation pressed against him in such a way, fragrant and _unbearably_ tempting?

She reaches up, trailing her fingers against his cheek. He flinches into her touch, an ice cube thrown onto the inferno ready to eat him _alive_ in his soul.

“I can feel you thinking,” she says softly. “Tell me.”

“I want you—I want _all_ of you—more than I can possibly express,” he confessed, the sound rough in his throat, a stone unwilling to be wedged. “But… heavens, you would _undo me._ Ruin me. Leave nothing in its place, I…”

“Have you ever taken something for yourself, without thinking of the repercussions? You are self-sacrificing to the extreme, Exarch.”

_Self-sacrifice._

His righteous suicide scheduled for the morrow.

“It is not a matter of _taking,”_ he rasps. “My love, I would give you _everything._ ”

He could end it all. And he rightfully should. He robes were folded a yalm away, enough dream powder to drag her down into sleep, end his suffering, and let him burn alive with need for the rest of the night.

Her thumb brushes across his lips, her nose brushing against his. “I won’t take anything unless you freely give,” she whispers, “but, you should know I want this too.”

There is a part of him, deep within himself, starved into insanity, chained and bound and tormented, the part the Exarch sealed away when he pulled the glamoured cowl over his head for the first time, that is _howling._ Had _been_ howling for the last century, and it has grown to a crescendo he can ignore it no longer, no longer bury it with noble intentions or aspirations.

G’raha Tia crushes her lips to his, keening like a caged animal.

It is surrender and salvation in the selfsame stroke; she tastes of home, the comforts of the night and blessed darkness, an undercurrent of _love_ he is underserving of on her tongue as she takes his offerings, burns them to nothing, leaves nothing in its wake. Nothing save for the breathy moan as he cups her neck, how she digs her heel into his back to bring him closer, the hard, painful line of his erection digging into that luxuriant _heat_ at her center.

“Stop me,” he pleads, “i-if I presume too much, if I go too far—“ 

“You can do no wrong,” she gasps, a sound he swallows with a greedy groan.

_I do so much wrong, but this… this is the worst thing I’ve done_

Allowing himself to love, be loved. Feel and be felt. Know and be known. Sins beyond reckoning, uncountably damnable.

He gives himself over to debauchery, to selfishness. Her tongue slides between his parted lips, skims the ragged edge of his teeth. She cants her head, seeking, before enclosing around his bottom lip, and he _bucks_ into her when she sucks. His mind spins when she makes the most delightful purring noise low in her throat.

He is gone, captured heart and soul by her.

He breaks away, and she mewls her protest until he works down her cheek, tasting salt, down her jaw, to her neck. She tangles her fingers in his hair…

… And he crumples into her when her hand brushes his ears.

It’s too much. It’s not enough.

He sobs into her bare neck, a torrent of grief, of apologies. She is silent, running her fingers through his hair, rubbing his ears in the most caring of gestures.

“Raha,” she breathes, and _oh_ it is a sound he has not heard in so, so long, and he folds around her in anguish, rendered incapable, broken, sundered.

“I knew,” she whispers, pressing the assurance into his forehead with her lips. “I knew from the start, how could I _not?”_

“I-I was nothing—“

She cups his face, kisses him again, rubbing soothing circles into the tear tracks on his cheeks with her calloused thumbs.

“Everything stays here,” she whispers. “I swear to you.”

“How can you care for me, want me, even still—?”

Another kiss. Slow, tender, achingly gentle. Translating words into the press of her lips, his damp lashes brushing her cheek. She leans back, pressing her back into the mattress, pulling him over her. Both legs hook around his hips, drawing him in. Her hand slides down his chest, abdomen, down to his groin, cupping the hard length in his smalls, unambiguous.

“Would you grant me this boon?” she whispers. His breath catches in his throat.

_“Anything.”_

He finds her neck in the dark, fumbling but _sensing_ her aether fluttering on the edges, that blinding brightness, so familiar, broken and lovely.

“Let me take care of you,” he pleads. “Let me give you this.”

She purrs her agreement, and he bites, gently, into the soft flesh of her neck, and she shudders, squirming closer, bucking into his hips. His crystal hand skims down between her breasts, her chemise rucked up to her ribs, down the soft plane of her belly down to her apex, brushing, testing.

Her nails dig into his arm. “More,” she demands, hungry.

How can he do aught but acquiesce?

Drags a finger up, then down her slit, then again, pressing harder, watching in shock as she writhes against his hand. She is _unbearably_ wet, the knowledge alone making his head spin.

“Can I kiss you?” he whispers, pained. “Down…?”

She answers by capturing his lips, boldly slipping her tongue into his mouth, scorching heat. He could come from kissing her _alone_ , the mere idea enough to fan the flames to a roar in his heart.

His nose and lips skim down her sternum, smoothing both palms over her breasts, nipples pebbling beneath the skin fabric, his hands joining his mouth down her waist, and she cants her hips up towards him, and he veers off to kiss the sensitive skin of her hip, biting harder here, some carnal urge to _mark._

“Please…” she whinges, and he hooks her smalls to the sides, and tastes the primordial sea itself as he kisses her _there._ Silk and lush; her thighs come hard around him, her poorly stifled cry muffled by the pillow. Her pearl is so swollen, so needy; a broken sob rips out of her when he closes his mouth around her.Both her hands fly to his head, pressing him into her, folding around him

“Just like that, Raha, please…”

“Say my name,” he breathes against her. Hums _hers_ as he flicks his tongue against her. One of his hands snakes up her writhing body to cup her breast, squeezing the pliant warmth, the other between his own legs for a modicum of relief.

She obeys; the syllables broken, vulnerable, sending another shudder down his spine as he works her. He _feels_ it before it happens; her muscles clench and her breath catches, before he escalates on her, working desperately towards her peak, jaw straining, her slick clinging to his cheeks.

_“Raha, Raha…!”_

He comes into his hand, his cry muffled in her folds, as she comes apart on his tongue. The darkness may have given him this moment, but _gods_ he would give anything to see her like that, to watch her come apart and wreck and know it was _him_ who rendered her so. He lingers on her until he’s certain she’s crested, shirking his soiled smalls before moving up to her. She instantly nuzzles into him, breathy and giggly, a contrast to the despair making a home around his heart.

“Thank you,” she breathes, “for giving me this, for giving me _you…_ ”

Words escape him; exhaustion begs him to sleep, anguish a sickening lullaby. He merely kisses her again, light, soft, before she snuggles closer, breathing already growing heavy with sleep.

Upon the morrow, she is gone, leaving only her scent as a lasting reminder of what she had given him in the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> done for good good as dead is one of my favorite things i've written, & i had a hard time how it should end. this was one of the options, & while i'm glad i took the route i did, it was cathartic to write this.  
> i hope everyone is staying safe and well despite current events. i'm thinking of you all. 🖤  
> shout-out to sleep token's ["dark signs"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVlJpp_-V7M) for making me cry on my way to class today 🙃


	24. beam.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated G for: really vague description of an underage couple kissing and very mild sexual content between an of-age couple.**  
>  His reputation followed her everywhere.  
> Lyna & Exarch, Lyna/Unnamed Female, Exarch/WoL.

**beam** | _noun_

\ _ˈbēm_ \

a piece of timber in construction

the main stem of a deer's antlers

a ray or shaft of light

* * *

Despite her grandfather’s wishes, there was a reputation that came with being the Crystal Exarch’s ward. And how could there not be? A hundred thousand rumors followed him everywhere he went. Some insidious, some inspiring, and some that were just… odd.

“Have you ever seen him sleep? Someone said she saw him in the Cabinet of Curiosities before dawn, and a guard said he saw him there as he left his shift!”

“You know, he _could_ just be a really short scaleless Drahn, and he's hiding his face 'cause he's embarrassed!”

“I can’t believe he’s stayed _single_ for so long! Are none of our Crystarium girls good enough for him, or… is he pining for some long lost love?!”

She corrected what she could, laughed at some, and cringed at others, boiling just beneath the surface at the _sacrilege_ of contemplating such a man’s love life. It was his personal business!

… But Lyna, too, speculated on such matters. She concluded privately after several open-ended questions he simply had no interest in the matters, and when she sought advice, she found the council of others, to varying results.

It was late adolescence when she had her first love. A truly fiery affair of smuggled love letters and quiet moments stolen in the sundrenched orchards between trainings and classes. She was a particularly short Drahn, with silvery-blue eyes that glimmered even in darkness and shimmering black hair she _always_ wanted to run her hands through, a contrast to the messy silver on her head. They weren’t a perfect match, but in Norvrandt, the sense of impending danger had a way of driving unlikely sorts together. Lyna was to audition for the guard the second she came of age, whereas she wished to follow in Moren’s steps in tending the libraries.

“Grandfather would love you,” Lyna assured her for what felt like the millionth time. “Neither of you can put down a book to save your life.”

She shuddered, discomfited as always when Lyna brought up the Exarch. “He scares me. Why doe he hide his face? Why does no one question it?”

“He has his reasons,” Lyna frowned, “and he speaks for himself in his actions. Is that not enough?”

She didn’t seemed convinced in the slightest.

Matters came to a head two weeks later. There were a handful of haunts in the Crystarium lovers would sneak away to, unspoken but well-known. Lyna knew the secrets of this city better than anyone save the Exarch, and they’d found an especially private alcove in the bowels of the city behind boxes which hadn’t been moved in the past decade. The Drahn had dragged the taller, clumsy Viis into the darkened haunt for what Lyna would learn to call _necking._

There always came the risk of getting caught; most likely being chased off by one of the guards or by a surly custodian. They were young and it was merely harmless fun, and the risk only fanned the flames.

But no encounter with the Sin Eaters could ever quite rival the absolute terror that crept up her spine when she heard her dear old grandfather’s voice.

“Is that… Lyna…?! _Oh my word_.”

Lyna tore herself away to see the extremely sobering sight of the Exarch, who had gone absolutely red from the neck up, body language abashed and embarrassed.

“I am,” she gasped, “so, so, _so_ sorry—“

“I-It is no matter,” he waved his hand, rubbing his neck with the other. “Believe it or not, I was young once, too. I uh, thoroughly apologize for my indiscretion.”

“We should be the ones apologizing!” Lyna squeaked. Her friend was completely silent, eyes wider than saucers, pale with utmost horror.

“You must be the Drahn Lyna’s told me so much about,” the Exarch smiled The Drahn shrinked back. “I wish we had met under better circumstances. Perhaps some tea, later, when we are all in much less compromising straits?”

Her mouth fell open, then closed. She seemed truly incapable of thought in any capacity, a rabbit seeing the nock of an arrow.

“We’d love to,” Lyna spoke for her. “Thank you, Lord Exarch.”

He seemed eager to leave, and she didn’t think she’d heard quite the last of this incident, but truthfully it had gone much better than all her worst case scenarios.

Her girlfriend did _not_ feel the same.

“He’s going to kill me,” she agonized, burying her face in her hands. “He was _terrifying!”_

“Terrifying?” Lyna scoffed. “Grandfather is the most gentle person I’ve ever met. He’s never raised his voice at me, even when I deserved it.”

“That’s the worst, I _wish_ he’d yell at us, that’d be less scary than that quiet… rage!”

“Quiet rage,” Lyna said, dumbfounded. "He was more embarrassed than we were!" 

They argued bitterly over it in the following weeks. While it wasn’t the final straw in their fumbling relationship, they parted ways shortly after, and shortly after _that_ Lyna auditioned for the Guard and fought her first Sin Eater, and such fleeting matters left her head entirely. 

“Did they not have any better fitting armor?” The Exarch frowned. Lyna was tall but _skinny_ , had shot up so fast her body hadn’t had time to catch up with her, and it’d been impossible to find armor that quite fit her. All the pieces were too small or too big, cinches tied tight or barely hanging on. 

“The Captain said I’d grow into it,” she huffed. “I can take care of myself.”

He had reached up to adjust her pauldron; at the acidity in her tone, his mismatched hands retreated to his sides once more.

“Forgive me,” he murmured. “I am but a sentimental old man who still remembers when you were no taller than my knee, all big ears and wide eyes. But I shall not bore you with such prattling. How fares your… friend?”

“Ah,” Lyna frowned. “We er… are no longer seeing each other.”

“My condolences. You spoke so fondly of her.”

She couldn't control the bile in her voice. “Yes, well, she was _terrified_ of you.”

It was far from the only reason they’d fallen apart. But something about the anxiety of the past day had her combative, looking to draw blood, indiscriminate and bitter.

He looked down for a long moment, his teeth bared in a grimace, before peering back up at her. “I apologize,” he said firmly. “I have tried to spare you the unfortunate burden of this title, but it seems I cannot spare you all of such things. I am likely the _worst_ person to give you advice on this matter, but I shall endeavor to be more sensitive in the future. I only wish for your happiness, Lyna.”

How like him, to take her vinegar and turn it into wine. His kindness was _infuriating._ But even then she could not bring herself to chastise him.

“My lord.” She brandished the Crystarium salute she had spent so long practicing, his lips curving up into a wry smile, before leaving for her new barracks.

Love was catch-as-catch-can for Lyna thereafter, fraternization forbidden between guardsmen, and her later promotion to Captain of the Guard rendering her almost as untouchable as the Exarch himself. If it happened… well, she would enjoy it while it lasted, as one can only enjoy temporal things in this realm.

But to her great surprise, it seemed the Exarch would fall in love before her.

All the tell-tale signs were there. Looking as if someone had smacked him upside the head when the Warrior entered the room, the ferocity he showed in Holminster Switch; she’d known him accomplished at swordplay but she knew what it felt to protect something dearly beloved, and the fearless way he threw himself at the Sin Eaters spoke volumes where he spoke none. He slept and ate even less then he did before, nigh on _mooning_ over her when she was gone. When he uncowled himself, a feat he knew he would have only done for the Warrior alone, those scarlet eyes never left her when she was in the area, and there were several evenings where they were both entirely impossible to find. 

There was no question, and even the Crystarium’s people knew it; their lord had fallen in love, and was as helpless as a kit in the matter.

She wondered if anything would come of it; the Warrior of Darkness courting their Crystal Exarch was a strange idea indeed. But shortly after they returned from the Tempest, the Exarch’s surprisingly handsome face revealed to his people, she was patrolling the Crystarium grounds, taking a shift for a guard on maternity leave. She wandered through the orchards, nightfall all around, when a shock of familiar red hair caught her eye.

“My lord—?!” She bit down on her tongue, skirting away behind a tree. 

She was far enough away they wouldn’t see her, but close enough she could clearly witness what was unfolding, an errant moonbeam exposing the affair. The Warrior’s back pressed against a tree trunk, the smile on her lips more predator than prey, and the Exarch’s mismatched hands braced on either side of her head, eyes glimmering with mirth, whispering to her. Their smiles were sweet, with a hint of something more at the edges, and the Warrior fisted the Exarch's robes with a familiarity only afforded to lovers. 

This was _not_ the first time such a tryst had happened.

Duty and honor tell her to keep moving, but a rapt fascination, lingering from childhood, keeps her still.

 _Have a care with his heart,_ Lyna thinks to herself when the Exarch leans down to slant his lips over the Warrior's, unbearably gentle. _He has loved you my entire life and more._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lyna's gay & there's nothing anyone can do or say to change that, cool? cool  
> sorry if it's a bit rough, i couldn't decide what to write for the longest time, ugh.


	25. wish.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated T for: descriptions of night terrors and panic attacks.**  
>  You sleep better with him.  
> WoL/Exarch.

**wish** | _verb_

\ _ˈwish_ \

to confer something unwanted on someone 

to give form to an aspiration 

to desire for 

* * *

There is never a concise line between platonic and amorous. There is no great divide to be crossed, only a thousand little surrenders, each feeling easier and more necessary than the last, until you can look only look back and laugh to one another, _how blind were we?_

It started, much as these things always do—over tea. Brewed strong and scalding late in the evening, a teasing sense of forbidden indulgence in every golden sugar cube.

“Will you have difficulty sleeping?” The Exarch asks, sliding your teacup and saucer over to you. Cerulean, worn, and chipped; it had quickly become _your_ mug over the past several moons, and the Exarch always kept it cleaned and readied for your use on the event of your visit.

You scoff a laugh as you swirl cream into the dark tea. “I have difficulty sleeping anyway. A mug of tea and some sugar won’t change my luck.”

He cocks a brow; something flashes in his sanguine eyes. He, much like you, has this overriding urge to fix and amend whatever he could, and you were no exception. “Is it merely insomnia, or…?”

“I have nightmares,” you murmur into the steam of your tea. It startles you, how easily the admission flows from your tongue, one you had kept from the Scions, from inquiring chirurgeons and friends alike.

“How long?” he asks, patient and warm.

“Years. They were tolerable, before, but after recent events… well, they’ve never been worse.”

“May I ask what the nature of these nightmares are?”

You nod. “Of course. Reliving past experiences; Haurchefant, Ysayle, Yotsuyu…” _The list of all I’ve failed,_ you think to yourself, the names alkaline on your tongue. “Sometimes Zenos, sometimes Emet-Selch. Other times, worst fears given reality. And I wake up…” you laugh bitterly, “this is so ridiculous—I wake up in a complete panic, screaming and crying like a godsdamned infant…”

His spoken hand slides across the table to yours; curves around your hands cradling your mug, strong and assuring. “If one of your companions told you they had such nightmares, would you condescend them so?”

“Of course not.”

“Then pray do not do so to yourself.”

You smile wryly at him. “You of all people know such things are easier said than done.”

“Then by all means, correct me when I fail to heed my own words.” The corners of his eyes crinkle with amusement, a kindness so dear it borders painful. “Is there anything that can be done?”

You hesitate, and a keen observer to your moods, the Exarch squeezes his hand around yours, implacable and encouraging. It grants you the courage required to speak.

“Would you stay with me?” you say in a rush, unable to meet his eyes. “J-Just until I fall asleep. I feel very... at ease with you. If it discomfits you, or it is too large a—“

His thumb brushes over your knuckles. “I am happy to,” he assures you. “It is no burden at all.”

He read to you, at first. Allagan myths from a worn leatherbound tome, the pages crinkling in his fingers as he leafed through the pages, his voice as sweet and languid as warmed milk. The first handful of nights, the Exarch was gone in the morning with no indication he was ever there, and you wondered at the strange, fluttering feeling of sadness in your breast.

Once, even the lullaby of his stories wasn’t enough for the demons lurking in your mind. Visions of blood, of flame and fury and rage; Estinien’s bloodthirsty grin as he slaughtered Vidofnir, Zenos stalking forward, a bulwark of unhinged carnage… your shriek split the night, bedclothes tangled around your limbs as you struggled for breath.

“You’re safe, you’re safe,” came a soothing murmur. G’raha leans over you, hands reassuring on your shoulders—when had you sat up?—and you bury your face into his warm robes before you can stop yourself, shuddering into him as his arms encircle you, the weight of him grounding you back down to reality.

“I’m so sorry,” you stammer, sniffling hard, embarrassed and shocked at your panic even as you tremble.

He strokes your hair, his words rumbling in his chest in tandem with the steady thrum of his heartbeat against your ear. “Do not be,” he whispers. “I am grateful I was here.”

It feels alien to be taken care of in such a way. He wipes the tears from your cheeks with a swipe of his thumbs, a motion so tender it leaves you breathless, rubs your back as you blow into a handkerchief.

“How long was I asleep?”

“Only a bell,” he tells you. “I was dozing myself.”

“You’re too old to be sleeping on the floor,” you admonish. He barks a laugh.

“How like you, to be concerned for me when you’re the one who needs taken care of.”

You blush. “I should be okay, G’raha. If you like, you can leave.”

“I’m not convinced,” he frowns. “If you want me to leave, I will, but I would prefer to stay.”

 _Well,_ you think to yourself, _if it’s up to me…_

“Stay with me,” you murmur. “Here.” You blush at your own boldness. “It’ll, uh, be better for your back.”

If he was embarrassed or taken aback at your suggestion he does not show it. Merely nods, quickly undressing (and you _do not_ look at him doing so) before you pull him under the quilt, feeling selfish and greedy as you cuddle into his arms, exhausted and boneless as the last shreds of your anxiety slips away.

You could not remember having a better night’s sleep.

 _I wish for this every morning,_ you think to yourself as you watch the morning sun creep over his slackened, peaceful features. The noble slope of his nose, the ragged edge of crystal encroaching over his cheek, the long sweep of his lashes. It feels like stealing time itself, to watch him slumber.

You apologize roughly a hundred times over breakfast, and he is quiet and contemplative as you grovel into your muffin and eggs.

“How did _you_ sleep, Warrior?” he finally asks.

You blink. There’s a familiar urge to lie, to conceal your feelings.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever slept better,” you finally say, truthful.

The smile that breaks across his face is more beautiful than any dawn.

“Then it was well worth it, and I will hear no more apologies from you.”

Your duties take you away from the First for two weeks after. Your nightmares intensify, slumbering in inns or tents alike—and as you struggle against the crushing feeling in your chest, your breath impossible to catch—you _miss_ him, unbearably so.

It is enough to make up your mind.

You hug him when you see him in the First, running into him in the Exedra, heedless, for once, of the eyes that might be on you. G’raha makes a small noise of surprise before laughing into your hair. “Welcome back, Warrior.” He seems ridiculously pleased at your affections. 

“I missed you,” you whisper into his robes. Just for him. 

You _hear_ his heart race, and it is all the confirmation you need.

It takes all your courage to give voice to your wish that evening over dinner, the tea sweetened with rose and hibiscus from Costa del Sol, a luxury, he told you, he thoroughly missed.

“Raha.”

He starts at his name; it is strange, how significant dropping a single consonant alters an entire meaning in one’s name for the Seeker, and Raha, removed though he may have been from such traditions, isn’t immune to it either.

But the fire in his eyes tells you it is _not_ unwelcome.

“Stay with me,” you plead. It feels like too much, to meet his eyes and give voice to such vulnerability, such _desire,_ but you couldn’t hide from this. Not from him. “Tonight. _Every_ night.”

Raha doesn’t respond, his face set in that characteristic calm betokened to the Crystal Exarch. He sets down his teacup carefully before standing. _Is he leaving? Did I misread everything?_

He moves to you, and bends down, warm breath ghosting over your face. Your noses brush; a familiar, intimate motion.

He whispers something unbearably loving to you before leaning down to capture your lips with his.

“I would wish for nothing else.”


	26. when pigs fly.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated T for: alcohol, discussion of sexual content.**  
>  The Exarch overhears a conversation.  
> Thancred & WoL, one-sided WoL/Exarch.

**when pigs fly** | _idiom_

\ _ˈ(h)wen-ˈpigs-flī_ \

to describe an impossibility

* * *

It was a perverse tradition he’d created, but one he found he was unable to break, despise it though he may. Each evening, after the Crystarium’s people had long since retired indoors, the last of the never-ending pile of paperwork filed away, the Exarch would wave a hand over the scrying glass and search...

... for _her._

It was just to check on her well-being, at first. No longer than a minute. See her location, verify she was well, and straight to his chambers, where he would _certainly_ not dwell on such memories over and over, turning them over in his mind far longer than anyone should, his skin fairly crawling with how guilty he felt over stealing such moments from her. 

The moments he caught of her were benign, charming in their banality. Preparing her nightly cup of tea, conducting repairs on her armaments, enjoying a late night snack pilfered from the kitchens. Once, he witnessed her undressing; conveniently turned away from his view, only the bare expanse of her scarred back as she pulled off her tunic and her bare backside to torment him. He looked for a second entirely too long before wiping the glass blank, an uncomfortable heat in his loins, the memory of that visage tormenting him for nights on end. 

Twice, he saw her crying.

Bitter, angry sobs, wails muffled by her pillow, vicious and broken. She cried like a wounded animal, hunched, furious, and alone.

He had never felt so helpless.

He expected nothing out of the usual from this scrying. Merely another box to be ticked on the myriad of things to be done for the day, but his brows raised as he noticed another person in her quarters—

—Thancred.

Had he ever seen them alone together? Thancred had been perpetually on edge since the Exarch had pulled him into the First, the weight of Minfilia’s fate an impossible grief to bear alone, yoked with his duties to Ryne. 

But why _not_ Thancred? He was the first Scion the Warrior met in Ul’dah, and she had fought bitterly to save him from Ascian possession. They spoke with an old, familiar comraderie; she seated on the bed, cross-legged in loose sleep-clothes, he hunched over on a stool, his trademark overcoat cast off, a bottle of liquor in his hands.

He wonders if they’ve breached the barrier of friendship, the image of them in her bed flickering through his mind before he can stop it; a completely immature and idiotic response.

No matter the nature of their relationship, it was _none_ of his business, and his feelings could not, _would_ not factor into it.

He prepares to wipe the scrying glass clean, when something catches his ear.

“And what of the Exarch?” Thancred asks, quicksilver eyes glimmering.

“What of him?” she snorts, taking a swig from her own glass.

The Exarch leans forward in his seat, pushing back his hood. _I’ll hear what she has to say, then leave,_ he determines to himself. One more indulgence. Truthfully the curiosity was simply too much to bear. When would he ever have the chance to hear her speak so candidly?

“I’m merely curious as to what you think of the man.”

Her scowl is derisive and wholly charming. “He’s a liar,” she says bluntly. “He has much to answer for, and while Urianger may vouch for him, Y’shtola does not think highly of him. But you’ve known him longer than any of us—what do _you_ think of him?”

Thancred takes a pull from his drink, staying silent for a moment, mouth working, before answering. “I think he is a man of incredible will, single-minded in his devotion to his cause. While he treasures his secrets, he has never given me a reason to doubt him, and if my testament isn’t enough, the Crystarium itself serves a living embodiment of his goodwill.”

The Warrior rolls her eyes, petulant. “You’re right, of course.” She teases out a stray thread in her bedspread, worrying it between her fingers.

Thancred fixes her with a wry smile. “He’s in love with you, you know. Hopelessly.”

She gives him a particularly icy glare. “Not funny.”

“I am entirely serious, Warrior.”

The gods had completely abandoned him. 

The Exarch buries his face in his hands, embarrassment eating him alive from the inside. 

He had at least hoped his feelings weren’t _baldly_ obvious, but it was proving impossible to contain himself around her, the century of tempering or otherwise. He wanted to take care of her, give her every kindness she deserved and more.

In the end, very little had changed from when he was but a boy trailing after his hero in the depths of the Syrcus Trench.

“Simply because someone is in love with me doesn’t mean I owe them anything. If that were the case, I’d owe half of Eorzea some debt or another, and I _wish_ I was exaggerating that number.”

“Maybe not half,” Thancred counters. “Maybe… only four ninths?”

“Thank you,” she grins. “ _So_ reassuring.”

“So, there’s nothing in your heart for him? You could certainly do worse, you know. And it _has_ been a while...”

“I’m going to pretend you’re not suggesting what you’re suggesting.”

“You know,” he continues undaunted, and as he speaks the Exarch feels himself turning redder and redder, even the very crystal of his arm and chest growing warm, “he’s the subject of much gossip in the taverns, and some would give much and more for a chance to bed him, cowled or otherwise. There is also _much_ contention on the extent of his crystallization, and you could make a pretty gil if you solved _that_ particular mystery.”

She wallops him with her pillow, hard enough to tip over his seat as he doubles over laughing. “Shut _up,_ Thancred! I almost liked it more when you were all taciturn and _mopey._ ”

“Don’t try to deflect.”

“I—“ she colors furiously. “I’m not bedding the Exarch. No. _Gods_ no. When pigs fly, perhaps.”

Thancred opens his mouth, likely to remind her of the porxies in Il Mheg, but refrains.

The Exarch himself cannot decide if Thancred deserves his admiration or hatred, so distracted by the knowledge that the Warrior had at least _thought_ about the guilty desires that had tormented him for the better part of a century.

It would be a long night. 

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much—as Urianger would so cleverly put it.”

“And what of _you,_ Thancred? Could it be your tastes have… changed?” She shoots, arms crossed.

He scowls. “If my tastes have changed at all, they’ve only gone entirely _numb._ Don’t think I don’t know what you’re suggesting.”

The conversation drifts, in the easy way of friendship forged in the fire of the Scions’ tribulations. The Exarch finally summons the will to clear the glass, staring at the opaque crystal as if it would hold some semblance of answer. 

_When pigs fly._

It was an idiom he was long familiar with on the Source, akin to the First’s colloquialism of _when the night returns._

He was not vain enough to hope in any real capacity for intimacy with her—that was as far off a dream as any, and with how limited their time was, he could not hope to amend all his broken trust with her, or even win her affections. After all, she truly deserved better.

But, perhaps, her friendship…

Well.

The night _had_ returned. And porxies definitely dotted the sugarspun clouds of Il Mheg.

Perhaps it was not such a ridiculous dream after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen wol-chan's in love with him she's just real tsundere about it don't throw me in angst jail again pls


	27. refulgence.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rated G, no warnings apply.  
> The Tower. The Knight of Swords. The Moon.  
> WoL/Exarch.

**refulgence** | _noun_

\ _ri-_ ˈ _fu̇l-jən(t)s_ \

A radiant or resplendent quality or state

* * *

No one got under your skin like G’raha Tia. 

Arrogant and foolhardy, his mismatched eyes—ruby and emerald—never seemed to leave you. Always watching. Careful to chart your movements, glimmering with wry amusement. Lingered on you during fireside discourse, always a touch too close, a smidge too personal.

It rankled you. Gave you the insidious urge to snarl in his face, raise hell and spit fire. _Is this the hero you’ve worshipped?_ Give him a reason to fear you, to hate you. 

But—

—he noticed when you were hurt when no one else did. Offered to bind your wounds himself after you escaped the Voidgate. Brought you tea—chamomile, soothing and warm.  Never tried to belittle you for what you didn’t know, and never treated you like some weapon to be thrown again and again at the next dire cause. 

You almost preferred the hero worship to these small kindnesses. 

You think it’s settled, when you escape the World of Darkness. He was going to follow you like a lovesick pup all the way back to the Seventh Heaven, begging to be taken in by the Scions. And gods above, you were inclined to let him. 

He tells you he has some small thing to take care of; says it casually, as if picking up an errant arrow or cataloguing one last anthropological facet. 

You take him at face-value, lulled into a sort of stupor by his kindness, his generosity. It takes Cid to awaken you to reality—G’raha lingers in the Tower still, and all signs indicated only one outcome.

He would remain for time immemorial. 

_“Your heroism will be the star by which I chart my course when I awake.”_

You cannot begin to determine the nature of the wistfulness in his voice as he speaks to you. Sadness, hope, loss, love. 

How dearly, would you miss this misbegotten historian? 

As the doors close behind him—a sense of finality creeping into your soul—he speaks (to _you,_ although you cannot say how you know) over his shoulder, the words lost in the rumblings of the Tower. 

You feel as if you’ve missed something important. A lunar eclipse gone unseen, a shooting star concealed by cloud cover. Beauty and magnificence dissipate into nothingness. 

You wonder at what he said to you, a mystery buried in the dredges of time. 

* * *

_“You.”_

Master Matoya points a gnarled finger in your direction, and your hand stands on end. _Surely_ immolation was imminent. 

“I would grant you a boon.” She takes a seat at her table, joints creaking their protest. “Sit.”

“But—Alisaie—“

“—I will take but a moment, and you will catch up soon enough. Come.” 

You were not fool enough to deny a witch her desires. You take the opposite seat, feeling like levin bottled, ready to lash out, to strike. 

You can scarce conceal your bewilderment when she produces a tattered deck of cards.

“You’re keeping me for a game—?” 

“If you do not wish for my guidance,” she growls, “you may leave, and do not let the door hit you on your way out!” 

You remain seated, bashful.

The cards are black and gilded gold, flying through her knobbly fingers as she shuffles. “Cartomancy is an ancient art, preserved in some aspects by the astrologians, but they use different cards; the Bole, the Balance, and so-forth. These are a more ancient art, and _not_ Ishgardian in design.”

She splays the cards in a wide arc before you, facedown. “Choose three.” 

You obey, relying on instinct for your decision. She sweeps the remaining into a neat stack once more, before flipping over the chosen trio. 

“The Tower.” A distant tower struck by a levinbolt, reminding you of friends lost and endless corridors long forgotten, “the Knight of Swords,” a man brandishing a sword, decisive, unwavering, “and the Moon.” The skull of a bat, and the card's namesake in the foreground.

She is silent for a long moment, before you open your mouth.

“I don’t know what this means.” 

You expect her to chastise your ignorance, but she grins wickedly instead, the dim lighting drawing her features sinister. “I do not expect you to. Would you like the long or short of it?”

“The short— _please._ ” 

She huffs. “So impatient.”

She gestures to the Tower. “Utter ruin awaits you—all you know will be turned on its head.” The knight. “A man, unwavering in his ideals, fanatical in his zeal.” The moon. “and illusion and deception await.”

You wait a moment, staring at the cards before you. “Anything _else_ I should know?” 

Master Matoya barks a laugh, cackling and riotous. “Hydaelyn is not done with you yet, my girl! Not by half.” 

* * *

_“At last—I’ve found you.”_

You taste blood and stardust on your tongue, the constellations charted into the glass beneath your feet swimming, wavering. There is something… _familiar_ to all of this. A closeness you cannot escape, lingering on the fringes of memory.

_He sounds sorrowful,_ you think as you face the enigmatic figure, hooded, resolute. What features you can see are young, but there is timeless age and strength in his stature, a raw, unfettered _brilliance_ to his voice. 

But the aether in your veins is explosive, furious, Zenos’ masked visage still burning behind your eyes.

“Who are you?!” It is a bitter, war-torn snarl.

He tames your anger with patience, inexorable, the line of his moue determined. 

_I’m missing something,_ you wonder as he speaks. _Something important. But what…?_

For reasons you cannot explain—til much, _much_ later—you reach out to his outstretched hand, desperate, like you couldn’t bear to lose him _again._

You tell as much to Aymeric during your convalescence. His dark brow furrows at your tale, and he casts his gaze upward to the moon peering through the windowpane, a crescent cutting across the darkened skies. 

“Mystery follows you like a pickpocket, doesn’t it?” he smiles. “I wonder if you shall ever truly find rest, my friend.” 

His words are of little comfort, and yet you find yourself yearning to stay in Ishgard—her familiar halls warm and welcoming against the cold, under the care of Count Fortemps, safe and wrapped in stony battlements high in the sky. 

But—

—the Tower—

—and your destiny—

—awaits.

* * *

You have no words for how Light tastes, how it _feels._ Like purest aether incarnate, molten wax and crumbling rockfall, dust before rain and levin before it strikes. Too much and too little, gluttonous and ascetic, contradictions along side perfect unequivocal harmony. 

The Exarch’s words ring in your ears. He speaks like a harbinger of time itself, a prophet witnessing legends come to pass. All through his words are a tremble, an _ache_ unfathomable and consuming. You feel a hero from the tales because _he_ wills it to be so.

You split the daylight open, exposing what lies beyond—the sunless sea, the velvet night sky dotted with stars and constellations. 

You had only gone without the night sky for a few weeks—but it was a day too many, and even you gaze upwards in a daze, the aether leaving you in a resplendent sigh. 

You would have stared forever—at the foreign stars, the moon waxing overhead, but the his voice draws you back down to the firmament once more. 

The Exarch takes you off guard—as he ever does. 

“How many years have I waited for this moment… for the one possessed of Her blessing...”

He kneels before you—as if a knight to his king, a gesture you had seen by many, anesthetized to its significance, but watching him sink to his knees, head bowed…

"...for _you._ ”

A memory, hazy, unfinished; a Miqo’te leaping from a landing, all spry smugness and self-importance. 

You clear it from your mind; for it should be long forgotten in the past. 

But something in the Exarch’s voice is so, so familiar when he responds to Alisaie’s interrogations, tempered by time, perhaps, weathered into obscurity by pain and suffering… but _there_ nonetheless.

_“There are…. things… we can ill afford to lose.”_

* * *

He echoes those same words to you, your backs pressed against a craggy rockface, the pebbles from the ocean below crunching beneath your boots as you draw your knees up, resting your arms on them. 

How many times had you lost yourself in the sound of his voice? If his appearance did not bely his nature, the sound of his timbre exposed all his illusions bare to the world, to _you_. Pockets of truth tucked into handmade sandwiches, in lingering touches, the sudden, uproarious noise of his laughter, a rare and fleeting thing. You treasured each and every kernel of veracity.

_“Well, it looks like you’ve been doing this for years to me!”_

Korutt wasn’t wrong—rarely had you had such a soul in battle so well-attuned to your movements as the Exarch. Perhaps he was just simply _that_ skilled—or there was more to the tale, as ever. 

The Exarch speaks of someone— _her_ —wistful and longing, intimating a long-kept dream to you. Eternal winds and adventures, romantic and effervescent. 

You find yourself wondering who _she_ is. And, despite your best judgement, against all your reservations, you imagine being _her. T_ aking a journey with him and him alone, the intimacy it would bring, nothing but two souls cleaved together…

It is… not an unpleasant thought. 

Not at all.

The Warrior of Light, for the first time, finds herself jealous of someone's affections.

“You must really love her,” you tell him when you walk the pebbled path back to Amity. Hoping he might disclose more, give you a hint to at least one of his meandering mysteries. 

The Exarch responds with a smile—secretive and lupine. The same smirk he’d given you when he concealed you and the twins from Ranj’iit, and you feel, once more, that you are missing something critically important. Like glancing over a celestial body in the skies. 

You wish there had been any other way to know the truth. 

* * *

The sky blazes all around—not with the nauseating abundance of Light— but with truest dawn after the darkest midnight. Streaks of cerulean mingled with the blush of the sun's rays. The tear tracks are still drying on your cheeks, mingling with the blood smeared across, boots caked in brine and meteorite. 

As you watch Ardbert’s axe dissipate into the aether, the Exarch stumbles towards you. 

Heedless of his wounds—heedless of his deeds, of playing the trump card in your battle, of all his efforts for the past _century_ —godsdamn him, he _apologizes._ Grey-streaked ears fold downwards as he shyly rubs his arms, every ilm of his body begging forgiveness. 

But there is one thing that must be said, before anything else, a debt long overdue. 

“Good morning, G’raha Tia.” 

His eyes swell with emotion; your words break a dam within the man, and you would regret your decision to call his name if it were not for the smile on his face after. 

You had never seen him—G’raha Tia _or_ the Exarch—look so at peace, a beauty rivaling the dawn itself, radiant and blinding. 

Dusk settles in all around you as you cross the Dossal Gate, the Tower a beacon beckoning you and yours ever homeward. The Crystarium needed no other confirmation of your success than the night itself, and after a hundred long years of suffering, the people of Norvrandt are ready for respite and celebration. Even the guard is narrowed down to a skeleton crew, crates and kegs of alcohol brought forth from cellars, the kitchens smelling heavenly all through the night. 

It takes some doing to find him. Hunting down citizen after citizen, finding no answers with Giott the Aleforged, so deep in her cups she was like to fall over, and finally finding a clue in steady Granson, who gestures upwards to the Crystarium’s lofts. 

G’raha Tia watches the full moon’s arc overhead, his staff cast aside, sandaled feet dangling over the edge of the wooden platform. And for the first time, you feel as if you are truly seeing the boy you'd watched lock himself away in a tower for the dream of a long forgotten people. 

“I don’t know what to say,” you murmur as you take your seat beside him. “There is too much, and not enough to be said all at once.”

“Contradictions aplenty,” he smiles. He is more youthful than you’ve ever seen, features unfettered in the bright blaze of the moonlight, leaching even his scarlet hair silver.

“I do have one question, though.”

“Only the one?” he raises his brow. “I find that surprising.” 

“Well, for now.” You grin. “Do you remember, when you first locked yourself in the Tower?” 

“With painful clarity, yes.”

“You said something, over your shoulder—what was it?” 

G’raha blinks at you, in confusion, then erupts into laughter. “ _That?_ Oh, gods. I had nearly forgotten.” 

“I’ve wondered, for years,” you admit. “I promised myself if I ever saw you again I’d wring the truth out of you.” 

His humor fades; he leans over, whispers in soft tones the elusive syllables you’d wondered at all these years.

_Ah._

What _else_ would he have said? 

The answer seemed all too obvious now that you knew the truth.

But so many things, were obvious in hindsight. The nature of Master Matoya's cartomancy, all those memories you had stifled down for the sake of duty, the Exarch's identity...

... and the identity of his inspiration. 

There are no lies in his smile, no concealment. Only the open freedom of a boy in the shade of his hero, his star blazing bright and glorious in the night sky. 

There is no other recourse than this—no other path you would have walked save for the one that lead you here.

To him. 

The refulgence of the full moon glimmers in his eyes as he watches you lean forward, drawn to him like the tides to lunar gravity, the arc of your orbit finally crowned as you press your lips to his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which op masterminds a title drop from the first fucking day & thinks she's way more clever than she actually is  
> i don't know what graha said, probably some inspirational bullshit that'd make me cry


	28. irenic.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated E for: explicit sexual content, semi-public sex.**  
>  The Exarch has a way of getting under your skin.  
> WoL/Hooded!Exarch.  
> 

**irenic** _ | adjective _

\ _ ī- _ ˈ _ re-nik _ \

Favoring or conducive to achieving peace

* * *

_ I’m the godsdamned Warrior of Light,  _ you tell yourself, cheeks hotter than a fire sprite,  _ so why does he… embarrass me so?  _

It was not that the Exarch humiliated you. Far from the truth. He had only ever been kind, considerate, downright  _ irenic  _ in his care for you. You could scarcely remember when someone had so carefully taken care of you, bidding you to sleep and eat where others merely took you as a spear to be thrown at each Sin Eater, never growing dull with use, never needing taken care of. 

But, unlike anyone who had came before, his attentions affected you in ways you could barely begin to express. He was only a few ilms taller than you, but something about how he held himself made you feel diminutive and small, a schoolgirl looking up to an intimidating professor.

A few suns ago, while you were running an errand for one of the Crystarium botanists, the Exarch came to see you, discussing some developments which unfolded while you were away. 

Suddenly, his speech was interrupted by a warm laugh, low in his throat.

“Is something the matter?” you asked, incredulous.

“Not at all.” He reached up to pick an errant sprig of violet leaves from your hair, his hand lingering on your cheek. His touch ignited fire under your skin, tender and loving as he considers you. 

“W-W-Well,” you had squeaked, “I-I suppose I will see you in the Ocular!” your voice cracked on the last syllable, and you fled the scene before he could respond, wondering at your leaping pulse, his touch lingering on you flesh still, like a brand. 

And here and now, you were in just as dire of straits. A meeting to determine the strategy of getting into Eulmore to find the final Lightwarden, whether subterfuge or walking directly into the opulent gates. Critically important, and you, the hinge of this plan,  _ should  _ be listening intently. 

You were beginning to sorely regret your decision to sit beside the Crystal Exarch. 

You and your companions had taken over a private study room in the Cabinet of Curiosities. It was intended for merely two, not  _ eight  _ people. You were crammed together, the air warm and tight as each person spoke from their seat. You found yourself between Ryne, who gave you worried glances, and the Exarch, your thigh pressed against his. 

_ Twelve have mercy.  _

The flesh of his muscle was warm beneath his robes, and you found yourself pressing  _ your  _ leg against his, wondering how that column of strength would feel pressing between your legs, grinding against your apex, the hard length of his cock against your hip. You licked your lips, struggling to catch your breath. This was  _ not  _ the place to be entertaining such a fantasy, especially about the  _ Exarch  _ of all people, but raw, molten heat was pooling between your legs, and you squeezed your thighs together for an ilm of relief.

“Warrior?”

The Exarch places a steady hand on your knee and you nearly leap out of your chair. 

“ _ Y-Yes?!”  _

You look around; to your great horror, all eyes are on you, varying some bemusement to concern, the Exarch himself smiling at your distress.

Alphinaud clears his throat helpfully. “We were asking for your opinion on some battle strategies against Ranj’iit, but it is clear you need your rest.” 

“Ah, um. Rest. Yes.” You swallow hard. “I’d appreciate that.” 

It was unbearably warm in the small room; you scoot back your seat with a noisy squeak and scrabble your way out. Your quarters in the Pendants felt too small, and you didn’t think you could face Ardbert in such straits. You fled to the upper rafters of the Crystarium, finding a quiet hideaway overlooking the Exedra, but still out of sight.

So lost in your own head, you entirely missed someone approaching.

“Is aught amiss?”

_ Oh, gods.  _

You plaster a smile on your face, not looking directly at him. “Yes, Exarch?” 

“Are you feeling well? Is the Light bothering you? Ryne could—“ 

He’s far too close, far too quickly. He stops ilms apart from you, placing a hand on your shoulder, and you flinch away from him, burying your face in your hands. 

“I-I-It’s not the Light,” you wail behind your fingers. 

“Oh.” He frowns. “Is there… is it something  _ I’ve  _ done?” 

You peer up at him, and a gentle smile washes over his features. “Warrior, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you so…  _ shy. _ ” 

“I don’t know how to act around you!” you blurt, shocked at your own words. “The way you touch me, the way you take care of me, I… I’ve never  _ felt  _ this way, I…” 

He frowns then. “Is… this a bad thing?” 

“No,” you breathe. “Not at all.” 

Something in his features  _ darkens,  _ and he tips your chin upwards to his face. You squirm under his touch, discomfited but so  _ willing  _ to be held by him. 

“You blush so beautifully,” he murmurs, “I find myself unable to stop myself from making you do so. I apologize for my indiscretion.” 

It’s impossible to tell  _ who  _ initiates the kiss, but your arms fly around his shoulders, breath coming in a ragged moan against his lips, the brackets of his hood digging into your cheek as he cradles you to him.

“A moment,” he gasps between your lips, grabbing your arm and pulling you into a small broom closet, slamming it behind you as he pulls you in for another kiss, hungry and desperate. “Have you felt this too?” he groans, dark and rumbling. 

_ “Gods, yes. _ ” His leg slides between yours as he presses you against the wall of the cupboard right where you’re slick and aching. You rut against him as his mouth drifts down to your neck, his nips causing you to writhe against him.

“Yes,” he growls, “gods, you are inexplicably lovely…” His crystal hand curves over your soft breast, feeling the pliant flesh beneath his fingers. 

“I’m… I’m so…” how are you already  _ so  _ close? The seam of your leggings rubs against your clit, the solid column of his thigh getting you ever so much closer…

“I want to see you come,” he breathes in your ear, “I want to see you come apart for me,  _ please… _ ”

The climax rips through you, sudden and overwhelming; he smothers your cries with his mouth, groaning his approval as you cling to his robes, struggling to get closer. He purrs his approval as you come down, panting and trembling. 

The Exarch strokes your cheek as he watches you. “That blush is still so lovely,” he breathes. 

You lean into his touch, sighing your contentment. “Only for you.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written on commission; thank you so much! <3


	29. paternal.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated T for: mild violence, discussion of past parental abuse.**  
>  Thancred and the Exarch had much in common with one another.   
> Thancred & Exarch, discussed Minfilia & Thancred and Exarch & Lyna, all platonic.

**paternal** | _adjective_

/ _pə-ˈtər-nᵊl_ /

of or relating to a father

* * *

The Crystal Exarch couldn’t remember ever seeing Thancred Waters look so uneasy.

“How fares the gunblade?” The Exarch asked, nonchalant. It had only been a couple years since he had summoned Thancred to the First, and the neophyte gunbreaker had spent the majority of that time on the road with his young charge. He swung the gunblade in a wide arc, light and skillful, sending the chamber spinning with a deft flick of his wrist, before unloading into the practice dummy. All but one bullet met its mark.

“I’m getting by,” he shrugged. “It’s godsdamned infuriating I can’t use aether, but I have my tricks around such things.”

“For only a couple years with the blade, you rival even the guildleaders.”

Thancred huffed. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Exarch. I'm still falling short in many ways. I’d ask for you for a bout, but you don’t seem the type to use a blade.”

“On the contrary.” He smiled serenely, presenting his aetheric sword and shield with a flourish of incandescent aether. “I am sufficient at it—sufficient enough for a spar, if you’d like.”

Thancred’s slate eyes gleamed, competitive and hungry. “Three rounds—should be plenty of time for Minfillia to finish her errands, eh?”

The Exarch felt a little bit of a cheat. Thancred was but a man, cut off from aether nonetheless, and the Exarch had the limitless reserves of the Tower at his beck and call. Try as he might, the use of that energy was purely instinctual, his body pulling on the power without thinking. During the second bout, the Exarch feinted hard, bashing Thancred upside the head with his shield. It caught him right in the nose in a spray of vermilion.

“My apologies,” the Exarch winced as Thancred cupped his broken nose, blood seeping through his fingers. "That was harder than it should have been."

“I should have known better than to underestimate an old man,” he said thickly, stumbling to take a seat on one of the stumps encircling the training yard.

“Allow me.” He placed his crystal hand on the bridge of Thancred’s nose, and in a trice the cartilage was mended; Thancred scrunched his nose in discomfort and blew hard into a handkerchief, chucking the soiled rag away when finished.

“Thanks.” Thancred stared at him, hard and implacable, giving the Exarch the distinct feeling he was being picked apart.

“Is something on your mind, my friend?” he asked gently.

Thancred grunted, looking sidelong and away from him. “Er… you raised Captain Lyna, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “Essentially, yes, although she’s more the Crystarium’s daughter than anything else.”

“How did… how did you do it?” His quicksilver eyes peer through his shadowed features, and the Exarch saw a reflection then. A reflection of _himself_ some years ago, terrified and out of his element, saddled with the burden of parenthood at too young an age. He himself had gone into a cold panic when he realized he would be adopting Lyna—there was simply no one else who could take care of her, and she had clung to his robes, tearful and wide-eyed, unwilling to be separated from the one constant in her life.

He had the advantage of the Crystarium’s boundless love and wisdom to guide him, mothers and fathers who had lost their own children to the Flood offering countless tomes of advice for him. But Thancred was alone, and saddled with the problem of reconciling the woman he had cared for in the Source and the young girl he parented now. 

“I take it you are having difficulty with your young charge,” the Exarch murmured.

“I didn’t…” Thancred gritted his teeth, the admission of vulnerability painstaking for him. “My father was an angry drunkard—’tis a common enough tale, I'll spare you the sordid details. And while I consider Master Lousoix my father… I see _him,_ that bastard, in me all too much. When I run out of patience with her, or she disobeys a rule… I would _never_ hurt her, but I don’t have much faith in my ability to take care of her. Minfilia—of the Source—was nearly as old as I when I looked after her. But she… is much younger, and looks up to me. Her only father figure in the world was _Ranj’iit,_ that prig. But I can scarcely count myself much better, can I?”

Thancred fell silent, looking shocked at the words that fell from his mouth. “I don't know your past and I wouldn't presume to ask, I just… I wondered if you understood that. If you had any… counsel for me.”

The Exarch stretched his legs, feeling a bruise blooming on his calf, his shoulder radiating with an old pain. “I was much like you,” he said, finally, choosing words carefully. “And I see myself in you, terrified of hurting a young girl because of my own experience, destined to repeat a cycle of abuse and heartache. But recognizing that fear, seeing that within yourself is the first step in addressing it. A poor father thinks he is right in all he does, but a good father knows his limits, knows he is far from perfect. Everything Lyna has grown up to be is a credit to her own strength of will, not mine, but I am grateful I was able to watch her flourish, grant her an environment in which to do so.”

“You’re a father to more than her, you know,” Thancred murmured. “The entire Crystarium sees you as a paternal figure. I've never seen anything like it.”

It wasn’t a new fact to him, but it warmed his heart nonetheless to hear it. “I can only hope I don’t disappoint.”

“Thancred.” Minfilia, her voice young and clear, peeped up from the sidelines. In her hands was a worn knapsack, and when the Exarch smiled at her, she turned away as if struck, cheeks flushing. “I-I’ve finished.”

“Excellent. Did you get everything?”

“I was only able to get an onze of gunpowder,” she said tremulously, as if afraid of her own voice. “But the traders told me there would be another shipment in a month.”

“If there isn’t a Sin Eater attack to waylay it,” The Exarch sighed.

Thancred nodded. “It’ll have to do. Come on.” He stood unsteadily, sheathing his blade and wiping the dirt off his coat. Blood clung to his collar. “Thank you for the bout, lord Exarch.”

He nodded. “The pleasure was all mine. Fair winds and following seas.”

They were more alike than not, he mused as he made his way back to the Ocular. Saddled with fatherhood far younger than they should have, forced into lifestyles by circumstance, taking up the blade to protect others.

Gods willing, they would both find their way out of this tragedy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not super well-read on thancred's canon, so forgive me my liberties with the source material.


	30. splinter.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rated T for: descriptions of injuries and treating them, mild sexual content.**  
>  There was much and more unsaid between them.  
> WoL/Exarch.

**splinter** | _noun_

\ _ˈsplin-tər_ \

a group or faction broken away from the parent body 

a thin piece split or broken lengthwise

* * *

He makes a valiant, futile attempt to avoid her.

The Warrior was quiet, as was oft her want, during the journey home. Y’shtola and Ryne pulled bits of his story out of him, egging him on to divulge more and more of his past, especially when concerning the Warrior. They sometimes prompted her to speak, and she would answer the question with the bare information necessary before falling into stony silence once more.

When they broached the Exarch Gate, they and their companions were overwhelmed with the sheer magnitude of the Crystarium’s celebrations, losing track of one another in the mass of people and the din of excitement. He told himself he’d break for the Tower the instant available, using any means necessary—

“Exarch?”

Her tone was impervious, light, painfully casual. He turned slowly to face her once more, forcing his features into accord.

“Warrior?”

She gestured to him. “You’re still wounded, aye? Let me have a look. I'll see what I can do.”

There was a smile on her lips, but it did not reach her eyes; they remained inconsolable gemstones, hard and piercing.

No, he would not escape her so easily.

“I appreciate your concern, Warrior, but I am accomplished at healing myself. You need not trouble yourself with my injuries.”

Her brows furrowed. “Skilled at healing or not, those wounds will need cleaning, and better two sets of hands than one. I’ll meet you in your quarters?”

“Y-Yes,” he stammered. “I suppose you shall.”

She set off, glancing behind her expectantly when he lingered in the Exedra. Leader though he may be, there would be no hiding from her. Not anymore.

True to her word, she presented herself in the Ocular bearing her healer’s knapsack, following him obediently into his modest chambers. It was ascetic in design; a small bed, several heaping piles of books, a claustrophobic kitchenette, and bathroom. Nothing more and nothing less than he’d needed to survive. It felt entirely _strange_ to see her in his private quarters; she seemed far too alive to be here, of all places, outside of existing in his heartbroken dreams. 

He watched in a daze as The Warrior boiled water, preparing the implements of her trade before finally gesturing brusquely at him. “Do you need help undressing?”

His cheeks colored wildly. “I should be able to handle it myself.”

He unfastened the top of his robe, shrugging his arms out of the sleeves, wincing before pushing the fabric down to his waist, leaving him bare-chested, feeling more vulnerable than ever before her. The chill of the Tower set gooseflesh asunder across his spoken skin.

If she was discomfited, she did not show it. “You look like hell,” she murmurs.

She had the right of it.

Myriad cuts and scrapes across his chest, and the dark, puckered circle of his bullet wound courtesy of Emet-Selch. The Tower had knitted together the wound as best it could, keeping him alive and whole, but it did not hurt one whit less for it, and between the constellation of wounds were dozens of bruises from rotten purple to pallid greens and browns.

The Warrior sucks air through her teeth. “There’s shrapnel in that wound—that’ll need to be picked out before anything else. Lie on your bed.”

He obeys, unable to supress a grunt of pain as he eased himself onto the sheets. She drew up his desk chair to hunch over him, running her warm hand over his abdomen before picking up a set of particularly wicked looking tweezers and setting to work.

For several long moments there was nothing but the sound of splinters being dropped into a bowl and her steady breathing.

He should have known better than to expect her to stay silent for long.

“So,” she says quietly, “it was you all along.”

Her voice is injured, a subdued fury deep in her timbre he wanted to dig out like the shrapnel in his skin and _fix._

“I apologize,” G’raha says hoarsely, “for deceiving you, my friend.”

She sighs, the warmth of her breath ghosting across his bare skin. “I know. I cannot begrudge you your actions, G’raha. You did what you had to do, and almost died trying to save my hide, and _everyone_ else's besides. _”_ She glances up at him, a sliver of tenderness in her gaze. “The Echo showed me your conversation with Urianger."

“Ah. So you know everything, then.”

“Just about.” Her tweezers find a larger shard wedged in the half-congealed flesh; he hisses between his teeth as she deftly extracts it. “Sorry.”

“Do not be—you’re trying to take care of me, after all.”

Her smile stings worse than any gunshot. “Even now, I suppose I am.”

He cannot find words to comfort her, the agony of nostalgia closing up his throat as he watches her careful movements, the steady quality of her hand.

“Would it ease anything,” he whispers, “if I said hiding this—hiding _myself_ , I suppose—from you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done?”

“You know better than I that nothing can heal wounds save time,” she sighs, “but knowing you’re safe is enough. I… I _missed_ you, G'raha.”

He wants to draw her up in his arms, crystal and spoken though they were, and breathe the comforting scent of her hair, feel her warm, _alive_ body against his. He settles for resting his crystal hand on her shoulder, gentle yet ready to leave at a moment’s notice should she wish it.

She falters in her work, looking away and speaking to the wall instead of him.

“I don’t think I ever stopped thinking about that night,” she confesses with a tremble, her voice barely above a whisper. “Did you?”

_They were far too young and felt nigh immortal in the shadow of the Tower, she still running high from conquering the Black Wolf and ushering in an Astral Era, and he would have done anything she asked, so hopelessly, completely enamored with her._

_She pulled him into her tent with a smile, and he was helpless, giving her himself in handfuls, taking what she offered in tentative, trembling hands. She was shy but eager, hungry and the loveliest thing he had ever seen, would ever see._

“No,” he presses a hand to his face in a vain attempt to stifle the tears rising to the surface. “ _Gods,_ no. How could I? You…” His hand on her shoulder grows needy, clutching her soft, worn robes, tears slipping past his squeezed shut eyes, “there are not words sufficient to express the breadth of what you mean to me.”

“Then why did you—?!” she glares at him, accusatory and watery, before cutting herself off with a resigned huff. “I know _why._ How can I resent you for following your destiny when that is all I have done myself?”

G’raha pushes himself up, ignoring her protests as he sits upright. “Simply because one’s actions are sympathetic does not preclude harm rendered. It doesn’t lessen the hurt I caused you, and I cannot apologize enough, only seek to make amends.”

She shakes her head, sniffling and wiping her tears away with the heel of her hand. “There is nothing to forgive, Raha. Not now, anyway.”

The sound of his abbreviated name on her tongue is sweeter than any sound in all of Norvrandt. “Then,” he murmurs, reaching out to capture one of her hands, “if you would allow me, I would attempt anyway to mend what I can. I did not anticipate any future in which you knew my identity and I still yet lived, but I would not squander my life again so easily.”

Her expression softens—perhaps for the first time since he’d summoned her to Norvrandt, a trace of the charming, heroic girl he’d fallen so unfathomably in love with in the uplift of her lips, the lovely flush of her cheeks.

“T-Then why aren’t you kissing me yet you—you absolute utter and complete buffoonish _git_ —“

He silences the rest of her insults with his lips, chapped and bloodstained though they were, and her ire dies with a muffled squeak, sliding into a contented hum as she winds her arms around his neck.

When they part, foreheads resting against one another, it feels as if the universe itself has slowed to a halt, silent and meditative, time’s passage ceasing just long enough to grant its two staunchest defenders a shared breath of respite. She cups his face in her healer’s hands, running both thumbs across his lips, slow and gentle.

“You would distract me and catch an infection,” she accuses, no bite to her words, only honey and affection.

“I can hardly worship you if I’m abed with fever,” Raha grins. His cheeks strain with the effort, unused to the gesture.

Her eyes glimmer with joy. “No you cannot,” she agrees.

She finishes her ministrations in comfortable silence, his hand wandering from the curve of her cheek to the tousled mess of her hair, as if to assure himself she wouldn’t disappear away as soon as he closed his eyes for longer than a moment. Once every wound is properly cleaned, aetheric healing administered to the lesser ones, she rises to quiet the lamps still burning and stoke the fire smoldering in the hearth.

“You should take the following day off,” she says casually, “to ensure your injuries heal. But that’s easier said than done for you, Exarch.”

He bristles at the accusation. “If ordered by you, I will stay abed,” he promises.

“Nevertheless…” Outlined only by the fireplace, he sees her strip off her robe in slow, deft movements.

“I shall ensure you keep your word.”

She steals into his bed for the second time, and this time, she does not leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've never tried my hand at CT-relationship wolgraha, i hope it was enjoyable!  
> and thus concludes ffxivwrite! i'll be publishing a table of contents along in chapter 31.  
> Thank you, so, so much to everyone who has read and commented, especially those who commented every day, I am so in awe of you & I cannot thank you enough or begin to express how appreciative I am.  
> So, what happens now?  
> I will be doing small edits on the fics here, mostly grammar and the sort. After I will be taking a small break to refill the brain vending machine, but I’m also kicking around a couple ideas for long-fics. I’m currently planning on getting one 90% finished, and then releasing chapters on a set schedule.  
> If you’d like updates, feel free to follow my twitter, tumblr, or find me over in the bookclub.  
> Stay safe in these difficult times, and thank you so, so much for reading.


	31. table of contents.

**i.** crux. | _wolexarch, E._

> The Warrior of Light has little patience for G’raha’s reservations.

**ii.** sway. | _wol/graha, hinted wolaymeric, G._

> The Alliance leaders throw a ball in honor of the Scion’s return, and your hand is highly sought after.

**iii.** muster. | l _yna & exarch, G. _

> The salmon fillet incident, and Lyna runs out of patience.

**iv.** clinch. | _wolexarch, M._

> You didn’t know it could feel like this.

**v.** matter of fact. | _wolexarch, T._

> You confront the Crystal Exarch on his lies.

**vi.** (free day) paroxysm. | _wolexarch, T._

> An AU in which the Warrior of Light takes the mantle of Titania.

**vii.** nonagenarian. | _wolexarch, M._

> You and the Exarch go ghost-hunting.

**viii.** clamor. | _exarch-centric, T._

> The Exarch considers his death.

**ix.** lush. | _wolgraha, E._

> The Warrior and G’raha indulge in some good shite.

**x.** avail. | _emet & exarch, discussed wolexarch & wolemet, T._

> Emet-Selch’s interrogation.

**xi.** ultracrepidarian. | _wolexarch, T._

> You and the Exarch share a glass of wine.

**xii.** tooth and nail. | _wolexarch, E._

> He has never taken you like this.

**xiii.** (free day) benediction. | _wolexarch, M._

> You are in dire straits after Vauthry’s attack.

**xiv.** part. | _wolgraha, T._

> Four times he doesn’t tell her, and one time he does.

**xv.** ache. | _wolexarch, M._

> The Exarch and Alphinaud use a dancer!WoL to sneak into Eulmore.

**xvi.** lucubration. | _wolexarch, M._

> His voice was a seductive thing all on its own.

**xvii.** fade. | _wol & ardbert, discussed ardbert/lamitt & wolexarch, T._

> You both know what it’s like to love someone when you’ve never seen their face.

**xviii.** panglossian. | _alphinaud & alisaie, wolgraha, G._

> Alisaie takes issue with the Warrior’s chosen consort.

**xix.** where the heart is. | _wolexarch, E._

> It wasn’t always rough. Sometimes it was too sweet.
> 
> sequel to “tooth and nail”

**xx.** (free day) aureate. | _exarchemet, E._

> No one crawls into his head like Emet-Selch.

**xxi.** foibles. | _wolgraha, E._

> After all this time, he still doubts his worth.
> 
> sequel to “take the dark, carve me out a home.”

**xxii.** argy-bargy. | _wolexarch, M._

> He merely wants to apologize.
> 
> sequel to “ache.”

**xxiii.** shuffle. | _wolexarch, E._

> There are things he cannot deny.
> 
> an alternate ending to “done for good, good as dead.”

**xxiv.** beam. | _lyna & exarch, lyna/unnamed f!drahn, wolexarch, G._

> His reputation follows her everywhere.

**xxv.** wish. | _wolexarch, T._

> You sleep better with him.

**xxvi.** when pigs fly. | _wol & thancred, one-sided wolexarch, T._

> The Exarch overhears a conversation.

**xxvii.** (free day) refulgence. | _wolexarch, G._

> The Tower. The Knight of Swords. The Moon.

**xxviii.** irenic. | _wolexarch, E._

> The Exarch has a way of getting under your skin.

**xxvix.** paternal. | _thancred & exarch, T. _

> They have much in common with one another.

**xxx.** splinter. | _wolexarch, T._

> After everything, there is much unsaid between them.

**Author's Note:**

> info on [ffxiv write](https://ffxiv-write.carrd.co/).  
> [my carrd.](https://thepapernautilus.carrd.co/)  
> 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ache Assuaged](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26484970) by [silvers_shadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvers_shadows/pseuds/silvers_shadows)




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